Daniel in The Lion's Den | 922: Mosquitoes and Malaria XII – Worldwide in Brief: Saudi Arabia / Yemen / Oman / the UAE

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922: Mosquitoes and Malaria XII – Worldwide in Brief: Saudi Arabia / Yemen / Oman / the UAE

28 October, 2009

Reports in green (checked and edited) / highlights in red / extra highlights and comments in brown / dangerous in orange / highly dangerous in pink / good and true in blue / and my comments in black. Kindly note that whenever Orange and Pink indicate Horse-shit and Horse-fart respectively, you will be told…

Saudi Arabia / Yemen March

IRIN-News 2008

An extensive Saudi-Yemeni campaign to combat malaria was begun in three Yemeni provinces near the border with Saudi Arabia, with the aim of reducing malaria in those areas.

The campaign would cover 13 districts and target areas near the Saudi-Yemeni border and parts of Tehama region. The Saudi-Yemeni partnership in combating malaria began in 2001 and National Malaria Control Programme NMCP said the two countries aim to make the peninsula malaria-free by 2015 – These people don’t know the female anopheles mosquito very well, do they? She is the veritable and original femme fatale!

In March 2007, 16,707 houses, with 48,580 rooms, inhabited by 100,803 people were sprayed thanks to a Saudi-Yemeni campaign in six border districts. Nice try, but it won’t wash because Man-the-Ape attacks the mosquitoes in 13 districts; they retreat to other districts or hide where the insecticides cannot reach. Many are the times when Man-the-Ape sprays homes and rooms with insecticides, and closes door-and-window-screens, yet wakes up the next day to find that not a few mosquitoes had survived and had their fill of blood. Man-the-Ape disperses them, they retreat and regroup; Man-the-Ape improves, they improvise; Man-the-Ape invents and/or develops new drugs, tools, strategies and methods, they develop resistance and circumvent or adapt. It’s evolution in motion otherwise what a cruel, heartless, and mindless God he must be to create such a coarse and callous creature like the mosquito…unless Satan, too, is doing his own creation – his own thing – on the side, with or without the knowledge or approval of God!

The NMCP distributed 381,138 mosquito-nets in 95 malaria-infected districts and, according to the WHO office in Yemen, some 60% of the population lives in malaria areas. Globally, malaria causes more than 5.5 million deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and in Yemen, there are around 900,000 recorded malaria cases annually and tens of thousands of people die of the disease every year. Plasmodium falciparum, a species of parasite, causes 90% of cases in Yemen and is responsible for the vast majority of deaths from malaria.

According to the Malaria Atlas Project, new research showed that high rates of population inflows from Somalia would represent a continued risk of re-introducing the parasite. There are about 800,000 African migrants in Yemen, mostly from the Horn of Africa, according to the Ministry of Interior, and more arrive daily.

Read “the Dire Plights of Others” series: 414 / 415 / 416 / 417 / 418 and 419

Medical-News-Today October 2006

Malaria is not usually thought of as a major disease in the Middle-East, but a study from Yemen revealed high levels of severe malaria in children. In fact, the figures showed that as many as 4 out of 10 children attending hospital with severe illness could be affected during the peak season – comparable to many countries in Africa.

Researchers identified over 2,000 children aged from 6 months to 10 years who were admitted to two public hospitals with suspected malaria. Malaria was confirmed in 1,332 children, 808 of whom had severe malaria.

The proportion of admissions varied according to the season, from 1% between July and September to 40% in February and March. 26 children died in hospital. Most deaths were in children with a neurological presentation, and more girls died than boys. Malaria places a high burden on health services in Yemen, say the authors. Malaria-control should be a priority and lessons should be learnt from other areas with seasonal malaria.

Oman

Beginning in April 1998, the surveillance system in Dhofar region, Oman, detected malaria cases among individuals…malaria cases were defined as unexplained fevers in residents of the Dhofar region from April to September 1998…Over a period of 7 months, 1279 patients with fever were examined for malaria parasites. 65 cases were positive for malaria – but there are several other fevers like yellow fever, dengue fever, Rift-Valley fever, that are transmitted by the female anopheles mosquito…

Out of the 2323 slides collected from the community and 2487 from school children, 21 slides were positive. All of them were from illegal immigrants. The entomological survey detected three vectors, previously found in the region: A. d'thali, A. sergenti and A. stephensi

Although the region is classified as a malaria-free region (Horse-shit), it has the potential for malaria introduction. That outbreak most likely occurred due to the influx of hundreds of illegal Somali immigrants into the Dhofar region due to the civil war, providing a sufficient number of gametocyte carriers for local anopheles mosquitoes to feed on and transmit…

The UAE

The Korean Journal of Parasitology May 2009

Local malaria transmission came to an end – supposedly – in 1997. Nevertheless, the UAE had been subjected to substantial importation of malaria cases from abroad, concerning both UAE nationals and immigrants from malarial countries with a total number of 2,119 cases in 2007. Plasmodium infections were identified with the genus P. vivax and P. falciparum…This simply means that malaria either has been there all the time or has returned…

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