Studies of The Therapeutic Efficacy of Selected Micronutrients In Malaria

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the prevalence of malaria has been escalating at an alarming rate,

especially in Africa. A recent estimate of malaria incidence derived from routine

surveillance data suggest 174 million episode occurred in African region in 2011 with

estimated deaths of 596,000 (WHO, 2011). Malaria has been estimated to cause 2.3% of

global disease and 9% of disease in Africa (WHO, 1997); it ranks third among major

infectious disease threats in Africa after pneumococcal acute respiratory infections

(3.5%) and tuberculosis (TB) (2.8%). Between 1994 and 1996, malaria epidemics in 14

countries of sub-Saharan Africa caused an unacceptably high number of deaths, of which

many occurred in areas previously free of the disease (Anderson et al., 1996).

Adolescents and young adults are now dying of severe forms of the disease. Air travel

has brought the threat of the disease to the doorsteps of industrialized countries, with an

increasing incidence of imported cases and deaths from malaria by visitors to endemicdisease

regions. The estimated annual direct and indirect cost of malaria was 800 million

US dollars in 1987, this was expected to exceed 1.8 billion US dollars by 1995 (Anderson

et al., 1996). The vast majority of malaria deaths occur in Africa, south of the Sahara,

where malaria also presents major obstacles to social and economic development.

Malaria has been estimated to cost Africa more than 12 billion US dollars every year,

even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum.