Granger reaffirms commitment to malaria fight at London summit
President David Granger in his presentation at the Malaria Summit in London yesterday proposed a fourpronged international approach to tackling the disease, the Department of Public Information (DPI) reported yesterday.
The President said the country is committed to halving the number of malaria cases and deaths by the year 2023.
From the 2015 baseline of 8,329 cases, the Guyanese leader said significant progress has been made in reducing the malaria cases.
“The total number of new cases declined by 60 percent between 2010 and 2015. Malaria unfortunately despite these gains highly resilient, a 5 percent increase in new cases was recorded in 2016 and again in 2017,” the President told leaders, according to DPI.
The highest incidence of these cases, the Head of State informed the summit, were recorded in the forested areas of Guyana where mining is the principal activity.
DPI said that the President then proposed the four-pronged international support strategy to combat the communicable disease be directed towards protecting citizens against the spread of malaria.
“It involves preventing and limiting vector-borne infections by the dissemination of quality health information, it involves providing improved tools for diagnosing and identifying active cases of malaria regardless of species and finally by procuring high-quality combination malaria treatment to ensure full cure of infected persons and to avoid drug-resistant malaria,” he posited.
The London Malaria Summit, President Granger urged, must emerge with a realistic roadmap to end the global pandemic.