Malaria threatens to kill 100,000 in Asia

Malaria could kill up to 100,000 people in coming months across Indian Ocean communities devastated by the tsunami if authorities do not quickly move to kill mosquitoes, a health expert warned today.

Health agencies were planning to launch a massive spraying campaign in Indonesia – the hardest-hit country – on Friday to kill mosquitoes that carry the deadly disease, said Richard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, the aid group leading the malaria campaign in Indonesia.

“The combination of the tsunami and the rains are creating the largest single set of mosquito breeding sites that Indonesia has ever seen in its history,” he said.

Tsunami survivors will be highly vulnerable to the mosquito-borne illness, Allan said, warning that 100,000 could die across the tsunami-hit zone that stretches across a dozen countries from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, India and as far away as Africa’s eastern coast.

“They are stressed. They’ve got multiple infections already and their immune systems are weakened,” Allan said. “Any immunity they had is gone.”

The World Health Organisation said that seven cases of malaria have been confirmed in the disaster zone in Indonesia where more than 106,000 people have been killed.

The cases are showing up now because the malaria season is just beginning and detection systems have been put in place in the last few days to monitor post-tsunami outbreaks.

Health workers will battle malaria by walking house-to-house fumigating all the neighbourhoods of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province where the devastation is worst, officials said.