Island winning malaria battle with China aid

SAO TOME－An island country off the west coast of Africa, Sao Tome and Principe is on its way to eliminating malaria with the help of Chinese doctors and medicine.

Home to over 200,000 people, the island country has been seriously affected by malaria. It reported 2,000 cases in 2020.

Sao Tome and Principe is striving to eradicate the disease by 2025. "We still need to work hard to meet this goal, considering the tropical and humid weather here," said Guo Wenfeng, chief adviser of China's expert team to the African island.

Since March, Guo and his team have been going around the villages of Agua Grande district, where a worrisome upward trend of malaria cases has been reported, to treat malaria patients and carry out anti-malaria measures.

The team, from the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, has the perfect assistant to aid its malaria fight－Artequick, a Chinese-developed anti-malaria drug. Its main ingredient artemisinin, now at the forefront of the world's battle against malaria, was discovered by renowned Chinese scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Tu Youyou.

Besides fumigating households and handing out insecticide-treated bed nets, the Chinese team has come up with a strategy of mass drug administration, or MDA, whereby residents simultaneously took Artequick to flush out malaria parasites. It is a groundbreaking strategy that proved to be effective in Comoros and other African countries.

Pilot project

With the efforts of the Chinese team, malaria incidence has dropped from 60 to 3 percent in the towns near the capital Sao Tome under the MDA pilot project.

In the town of Liberdade, which used to be one of the regions worst hit by the disease, not a single case had been reported for eight consecutive months since the MDA strategy was piloted in July 2019.

Liberdade, a town of 500 residents, once reported 1,000 malaria cases in a single year, recalled Guo, who is now on his third mission to the island. "Numbers do not lie. Locals' approval shows us that our strategy works," Guo said.

"We, the local population, want to collaborate with this Chinese team to fight malaria because we want to end this disease here in Liberdade, and consequently in Sao Tome and Principe," said Vasco Guiva, a local resident.

The MDA strategy "is undoubtedly a preventive action that consists of administering medicines en masse to the entire population", said Sao Tome Health Minister Filomena Monteiro in March.

The Chinese solution has helped in pursuing the country's goal of achieving the elimination of malaria in 2025, said Monteiro, while commending China's support in this arduous task.

For Guo and his team, they expect to continue fighting alongside the African island till the very end.

Xinhua