AGARTALA, April 25 (TIWN): Health Minister Badal chowdhury on Monday inaugurated a daylong seminar on World malaria day at Muktadhara auditorium.

World Malaria Day (WMD) is commemorated every year on 25 April and recognizes global efforts to control malaria. Globally, 3.3 billion people in 106 countries are at risk of malaria. In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 627,000 deaths, mostly among African children. Asia, Latin America, and to a lesser extent the Middle East and parts of Europe are also affected.

 World Malaria Day – a day to celebrate the gains made in the fight against malaria. Each year, this day highlights global efforts to control malaria and mobilizes action to combat the disease. 

The World Malaria Day theme provides a common platform for countries to showcase their successes in malaria control and unify diverse initiatives in the changing global context. Malaria-endemic countries have made incredible gains in malaria in the last decade, but sustaining them will take extra efforts until the job is finished and malaria is eliminated worldwide.

The theme for 2016 is “End Malaria for Good”. Following the great progress made under the Millennium Development Goals, it is important to build on this success and ‘end malaria for good’ under the Sustainable Development Goals.

Addressing the seminar Minister Chowdhury said that dominance of Malaria comparing to previous year is low due to timely spraying of DDTs in the houses and localities, deploy of sufficient health workers comprising of ASHA workers, MPWs and others, creating awareness among the people for adopting the safety hygiene measures, to maintain cleanliness, all this measures has slightly helped in declining the debacle of malaria in the sub-division, but still in the wake of preventing the spread of the malaria and Dengue in the villages the authority has taken the step of awareness camp.

It is to be mentioned here that since many tribal populations do not complete the full course of drugs, malaria become drug resistant and once a mosquito bites them, it can infect others. Many malaria cases are reported even in winter because of this phenomenon. As this season is peak season for jhum cultivation the tribals’ are toiling in fields that are swarmed with mosquitoes on their bodies, hence they are susceptible to mosquito bites