Asian and the Malaria crisis

Malaria is still proving to be a persisting problem in many parts of the world. Infecting up to five hundred million people per year, and proving fatal to a million of those, it continues to bring untold grief and suffering to large tracts of both Asia and Africa.

The disease itself is carried my mosquitoes, who often thrive in the inadequate and unhygienic water sources that many poorer communities have to rely on. The burden of infection hits hardest in the most deprived nations of the Asian and African continents, whose health services struggle to cope with the yearly influx of malaria suffering patients.

This ongoing crisis has sparked a meeting between eleven different Asian nations, who have come together to discuss new ways to tackle this deadly disease. Looking to recent successes in Africa, where insecticide treated bed nets have been deployed to safeguard communities against the disease carrying insects, Asian health ministers hope to utilise such treatments in their own countries.

However, when it’s the wealthy that can afford access to clean water sources and top of the range health care, it’s the poor who find themselves in squalid conditions with limited access to clean drinking water. Such conditions, when coupled with the humid climates of southern Asia, prove to be a veritable breeding ground for infection laden insects. Therefore the ongoing discussion on malaria prevention inevitably leads to discussion on the poverty and inequality that serves to exacerbate the problem of ill health and other blights.