Emily Edepi believes young people have a huge role to play in the elimination of malaria in the country and across the continent.
Edepi is the country lead for the Kenya Malaria Youth Army, an initiative outlined by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
It seeks to have the youth play a central role in malaria control activities.
The initiative is part of a social movement to fight malaria, improve maternal and child health and expand access to universal healthcare.
The idea was to create an army of malaria advocates to champion political commitments and resources across the continent.
They would sit on the high table from the community to the national up to continental level.
Edepi says young people in Africa are an untapped resource as they are still energetic enough, creative and innovative.
“We have stepped up to use our voice and just be able to call and hold our leaders accountable to allocate more funding, pay more attention to malaria prevention programmes and ensure the youth are included in malaria decision-making forums,” Edepi says.
“Malaria affects pregnant mothers, and looking at the statistics, young girls are mostly under that category. So as young people, we feel championing will help reach out to those young mothers and hence help end malaria.”
LED BY UHURU
Uhuru is the chair of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (Alma). His tenure is expected to end in the next two months.
He established a four-point legacy agenda for the continent to ensure Africa is on a path to eliminating malaria by 2030.
They include digitising malaria data, forming the End Malaria Council, fostering regional economic coordination and forming the Youth Army.
Kenya will be joining the rest of the World in marking World Malaria Day today. The day will be celebrated in Kakamega county.
Malaria is a major public health problem in Kenya. Each minute a child dies from malaria in the country.
Due to altitude, rainfall patterns and temperature, about 70 per cent of the Kenyan population is at risk of malaria.
Besides being the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the country, the disease is listed among the top 10 causes of outpatient visits countrywide.
The disease burden, however, remains the highest in counties In the Lake region, which account for 70 per cent of the cases nationally.
Kenya still suffers an estimated 3.5 million new clinical cases and over 10,000 deaths each year. This is a clear indication that Kenya is still far from reaching the goal of being a malaria-free country.
Despite the overwhelming statistics, Kenya has continued to make good progress in the control and elimination of the disease, and has emerged as a champion in the region.
COMMENDABLE PROGRESS
In 10 years, malaria prevalence has reduced by 50 per cent in the high-burden lake-endemic area, from 38 to 19 per cent.
Overall, Kenya has reduced the prevalence of malaria by half from 11 per cent in 2010 to six per cent in 2020.
Dr Willis Akhwale is Alma's senior malaria adviser and also the current secretary to the End Malaria Council.
He says malaria is a deadly disease but the numbers are going down.
“Thirty-four counties in Kenya have a prevalence of less than one per cent of malaria, very good progress. It means less children will be dying it means we will be saving lives,” Akhwale says.
He says the digitisation agenda was to ensure there is increased access to malaria data through the digital platform.
The idea is that the data must be available to the communities themselves beyond the policymakers so the citizens themselves understand the problem is within their locality and are empowered to take action.
To this effect, Alma has helped establish a digital hub and already, 13 countries, including Kenya, are sharing their scorecards, while eight countries have already shared their best practices.
Kenya recently piloted the community scorecard to look at major issues across the health spectrum at the community level, and the scorecard is now being integrated into the Kenya Health Information System.
On the formation of the End Malaria Council, 24 African countries have either formed or are in the process of establishing their End Malaria Councils.
Five of them, Eswatini, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, are fully operational, with 24 other countries expected to launch their councils during the World Malaria Day on Monday.
The Kenya EMC is led by Chris Gitonga, who has been in office for one year.
“It has taken us a year to do what we need to do legally to reach out to the stakeholders and public to then help raise funds locally and internationally to support the malaria programme in Kenya,” Gitonga says.
The idea of the EMC is to mobilise additional domestic public and private sector resources to bridge the gap in the implementation of the end malaria strategy.
As a result of continued advocacy, an additional Sh800 million has been made available to the national malaria programme to support projects across the country.
“In the next few weeks, you will see a large-scale indoor residual spraying campaign, and in three counties — Kilifi at the Coast, Kirinyaga in Central and Kisumu in Western — we want to minimise the prevalence of malaria,” Akhwale says.
Kenya has also championed the innovation and development of rapid malaria diagnostic test kits, which were launched in February.
The kits were developed by a team of researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Institute.
WAY FORWARD
DRC, which is now part of the EAC, carries the highest burden of malaria in the region.
There have been regional initiatives such as the Great Lakes Initiative that was launched last week at the Kenya-Uganda Busia border.
The initiative seeks to ensure there is better coordination of malaria elimination activities in the region, such as coordinated residual spraying and mass distribution of mosquito nets.
The kits have since been shared with the other East Africa Community member states to help in the validation of their effectiveness.
Alma is also supporting the World Health Organisation qualification process of the test kits so that it meets international standards and can be used across the African continent.
“So that we keep pace with future challenges, we need another generation of rapid test kits that is PCR-based so that we overcome the challenge of gene deletion,” Akhwale says.
The Health ministry has admitted that despite the efforts being put in to eliminate the disease, there has been emerging trends that if not checked risk reversing the gains made.
The impact of climate change has seen areas that were previously not malaria zones now recording malaria cases and constant outbreaks.
The head of Divison National Malaria Programme at the ministry Dr George Githuka says the trends have seen some subcounties such as Tiaty in Baringo and Loima in Turkana experience malaria outbreaks.
“As a ministry, we have enhanced our surveillance to monitor this rise in cases and respond before they become widespread and before there is sustained transmission,” he says.
Githuka adds: “We have deployed a strong surveillance system that is helping us to monitor all regions in the country and monitor for any upsurge in malaria cases.”
Lilies Njanga from Malaria No More UK says women and girls experience differentiated vulnerabilities and impacts of malaria, especially during adolescence and pregnancy.
“Malaria is more than a health issue, Malaria steals the future of our young people, cripples economies, crushes communities and causes heart-breaking loss,” she says.
Kenya in 2019 piloted the first-ever malaria vaccine in 26 subcounties in the eight malaria-endemic counties of Homa Bay, Kisumu, Migori, Siaya, Busia, Bungoma, Vihiga and Kakamega.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe on Wednesday announced that 900,000 doses of the malaria vaccine have been administered to children in the eight endemic counties.
The data further shows 275,000 Kenyan children have received at least one of the four scheduled doses of the vaccine, while more than 45,000 children have received their full course of four doses of the vaccine.
The CS further announced that the vaccine will be rolled out in more subcounties within the lake endemic region as from June.
The rollout to additional subcounties follows an advisory from the Kenya National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (Kenitag).
“I appeal to all parents and caregivers with children aged six months to 14 years and living in eligible malaria-endemic subcounties to visit their nearest health facilities or selected immunisation sites for the children to receive the malaria vaccine for free,” Kagwe said.
The World Health Organisation, on the other hand, has committed to ensuring the malaria vaccines are going to be equitably available to those countries that need them
WHO representative Joyce Onsongo says the Global Alliance Vaccine Initiative and other funding agencies have committed to the financial support of countries that will need to carry the vaccine forward.
