MALARIA control in Papua New Guinea is a challenge, a senior health official says.
Assistant project officer for the “Fast elimination of malaria by source eradication” (Femse) Xie Wei told The National, a 2021 report from the World Health Organisation (WHO) had revealed that PNG alone accounted for 86 per cent of malaria cases in the western Pacific in 2020.
Wei said based on the same WHO report, there were 1,470,120 estimated cases, which was a 16 per cent increase compared to figures for 2019, and 2,962 estimated malaria deaths in the country 2020 which accounted for 93 per cent of malarial deaths in the region.
He said the project had been started on Kiriwina Island in Milne Bay.
“Through the Femse project, we have implemented mass drug administration with Artemisinin based combination therapy (artemisinin-piperaquine tablets) on Kiriwina Island in Milne Bay,” he said.
“Through the project, there has been a decrease in the plasmodium (parasites) carriage rate from 18 per cent to 0.31 per cent and the project results are still being maintained since 2018.”
Wei said malaria could be eliminated as long as there was equal participation by everyone in malaria elimination measures.
He said many highly populated countries in the world such as China, a country with a population of about 1.4 billion, were certified malaria free in 2021 by the WHO and PNG could reach that bar if everyone was serious in the business of eliminating malaria.
“We have achieved outstanding results on Kiriwina Island,” he said.

来源：www.thenational.com.pg