Delhi likely to miss 2022 target to root out malaria
NEW DELHI: With most city hospitals devoting considerable resources to treatment Covid-19 patients, Delhi may miss its target of eliminating malaria by 2022, according to officials working on the ground in the malaria elimination programme. This, despite a twoyear extension on the original deadline of 2020 given to the Capital.
Officials said this is mainly because malaria cases weren’t diagnosed, treated at major government hospitals, or reported by smaller private practitioners during the pandemic. So far, Delhi has reported 32 cases of malaria this year.
“It seems unlikely that we will be able to eliminate malaria even by 2022. There are very few cases reported as we weren’t able to get data from hospitals this year. This is because, one, many hospitals were not treating anything other than Covid-19 cases, especially during the surge. Two, cases were not getting detected. Three, even if they were, they might be receiving treatment from smaller private institutions from where we were not getting data,” said Dr Ajay Handa, additional municipal health officer with the East MCD.
Officials said a major handicap of the elimination programme in Delhi is that the disease is not a notifiable disease, meaning healthcare institutions do not have to report cases to the civic authorities.
They compared it to Covid-19 and associated fungal infection mucormycosis which have been made notifiable by the government under the epidemic diseases act.
A senior official from Delhi’s health department, on condition of anonymity, said, “The notification making malaria notifiable will happen soon. It is in the last stages of approval.”
The process to make the disease notifiable was started before the pandemic in 2019. In June this year, then union health minister Harsh Vardhan had also urged the Delhi government to make the disease notifiable soon to help malaria workers in identifying areas from where cases are reported and carry out breeding control measures.
However, making the disease notifiable is not enough, said experts, who also pointed out that cases are underreported in several of the 31 states and union territories where it is notifiable.
“In contrast, if you see Covid-19, do you think it is possible even for one case to be diagnosed in a far off dispensary but not get reported to the union government through the portal? We need to create such mechanisms for malaria as well and enforce it,” said Dr Kaushik Sarkar, head, Malaria
No More (India), an NGO.
He admitted the country had made progress by reducing malaria cases by 85% since a national strategic plan came into force in 2017, but said more needs to be done.
“We still do not even know the true burden of malaria in India... People are tested for malaria only when they have fever. However, it is well known that the infection can be asymptomatic – up to 50% cases in high burden areas. Then the conventional tests have a threshold limit, beneath which the parasite is not detected,” he said.
In cases where the parasite concentration is lower, a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test might help. “Now, with Covid-19 PCR tests have been massively scaled up across the country. This can help in malaria diagnosis as well,” said Dr Kaushik.