Malaria reaches ‘epidemic’ levels

The mosquitoes seem to have woken up the government after taking 72 lives and spreading the malaria germ in at least 16,000 people since June.

Minister of state for public health Ranjit Kamble convened a meeting with civic authorities on Thursday, asking them to go on an overdrive against malaria.

The state health authorities have admitted that malaria cases have touched newer levels in Mumbai as well as Maharashtra this year. At least 5,394 people have been admitted to various civic hospitals in the city because of malaria since the beginning of monsoon.

Director general of state health services Dr Prakash Doke said it was bad news for metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai to report so many malaria cases. “We have to take urgent measures before it becomes a huge scare and goes out of control,” he said. Doke suggested that the BMC should evaluate if the state needed to increase its budgetary allocations for vector control measures.

The BMC for the first time has admitted that malaria has reached ‘epidemic proportions’ this year. Executive health officer of BMC Dr Jairaj Thanekar, however, said that it was expected. “Malaria had gone down in the 80s and 90s. But it is likely to go up now,” he said at a press conference on Friday.

Thanekar blamed the mutation of the milder form of malaria, plasmodium vivax, for causing the maximum number of deaths this year. The vivax strain causes 80% of malaria infections. “It has become more offensive possibly because of genetic changes,” he said. In the past four days, out of the 296 malaria cases, 237 were vivax, 56 were falciparum, and the rest were a mix of both viruses.

But experts in the city dealing with malaria believe that vivax cannot kill. “There is no conclusive evidence globally to prove that vivax has undergone any major change,” said Dr Sanjay Mehta, associate professor of Internal Medicine and chief of emergency medicine, KEM Hospital. “Most of the patients are already suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. Malaria infection could just be a trigger.” Mehta said even if vivax was undergoing some changes, it would take another two-three years to find conclusive evidence.

Additional municipal commissioner Kishore Gajbhiye blamed construction work for the rise in malaria cases. “It is next to impossible to keep a track of labourers moving in and out of the city.” Migrant labourers were carriers as they came from states with high cases of malaria, he said. And people should not rest just by doing the first round of tests. “The initial tests might show it as vivax but it could actually be the deadlier falciparum,” said Mehta.