Malaria killing thousands more than Ebola in West Africa

Source: AP-Excite

By MICHELLE FAUL

GUECKEDOU, Guinea (AP) — West Africa's fight to contain Ebola has hampered the campaign against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands more lives than the dreaded virus.

In Gueckedou, near the village where Ebola first started killing people in Guinea's tropical southern forests a year ago, doctors say they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria.

Guinea's drop in reported malaria cases this year by as much as 40 percent is not good news, said Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative. He said the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.

"It would be a major failure on the part of everybody involved to have a lot of people die from malaria in the midst of the Ebola epidemic," he said in a telephone interview. "I would be surprised if there were not an increase in unnecessary malaria deaths in the midst of all this, and a lot of those will be young children."



FILE- In this Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010, file photo, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Blair's left, and Religion Leaders hold a Mosquito net with a women lying inside to demonstrate the use of the net against malaria in Abuja, Nigeria. The operation to fight Ebola in West Africa has hampered the campaigns against malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that is claiming many thousands of lives. In information released Sunday Dec. 28, 2014, Dr. Bernard Nahlen, deputy director of the U.S. President{2019}s Malaria Initiative says they have had to stop pricking fingers to do blood tests for malaria, so statistics show a decrease in reported cases of maleria but the decrease is likely because people are too scared to go to health facilities and are not getting treated for malaria.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, FILE)


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