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DAKAR – In the Democratic Republic of Congo, health workers have launched a four-day blitz to fight malaria to halve suspected cases of Ebola.
"This will simplify things a lot if malaria is removed from the equation," said telephone Stefan Hoyer of the World Health Organization, the epicenter of the epidemic. Ebola in Beni.
The city of Beni in North Kivu province, which is currently fighting the worst Ebola epidemic in the history of Congo, has also seen its number of malaria cases multiply by eight since the beginning of the 1990s. last year.
Children who went to health centers for malaria were thought to have contracted the Ebola virus, and about half of those screened at Ebola centers were malaria-only, the WHO said.
If malaria is reduced, health workers will be able to focus on the real Ebola patients and move the others away from the intervention areas.
Ebola has killed 240 people and has infected more than 400 since July, in an epidemic that shows little signs of shortness of breath.
It is spread by contact with body fluids and its symptoms include vomiting, bleeding and diarrhea.
The worst epidemic in the world – from 2014 to 2016 – killed more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
READ: 19 dead in the DRC of Ebola in five days
Congo is the second country in the world in terms of malaria, behind Nigeria. Hoyer added that there were no more mosquito nets blocking mosquitoes in North Kivu, an eastern province that fights both against the conflict and against the disease.
Malaria can usually be diagnosed with a rapid blood test, but the risk of Ebola transmission requires health workers to rely on an badessment of symptoms, he said.
This normally translates into an over-reported number of cases – but not up to eight times, which is 2,000 cases a week, he said.
Starting Wednesday, health workers planned to go door-to-door for four days in the city of Beni, providing mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs to 450,000 people, the WHO said.
The goal – to treat people already suffering from malaria and prevent transmission between them in the short term, freeing up resources to focus on the most serious disease, he said.
"We can badume that the suspected cases of Ebola to be treated would be at least halved," Hoyer told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
That's what happened in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, when people with malaria filled the Ebola treatment centers during the Africa epidemic. West in 2014, he said.
The current campaign against malaria is modeled on that implemented in Sierra Leone, said WHO.
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