I have heard and read a lot about the covid19 pandemic right from the onset up to date. Even though I am yet to come across any case of infection physically, I happen to know many folks on Hive here that have been victims of the virus. Fortunately enough, none of those I know who got infected lost their lives to it.
The breakout of the virus had everyone fearing for their existence. While the governments in developed countries are able to make policies to curtail the spread of the virus while only hands got on deck to find a lasting solution, many, many African countries had something more biting inflicting them - hunger. Thus, many of the policies made to curtail the spread of the virus were met with defiance by the populace.
For example, in Nigeria where a large percentage of the populace survives on small businesses that require daily trades, the call for lockdown by the government never really took effect. While citizens of developed countries were locked down with palliative cheques from the government (perhaps bot all developed countries, by the way), the palliative foods sponsored by non-governmental organizations and private sectors in Nigeria never made it to the populace - a result of corruption.
Amidst all the hullabaloo, several notable individuals in the world started making predictions of doom for Africa in relation to COVID19. In a particular interview with CNN, wife to the popular philanthropist and CEO of Microsoft Corporation, Melinda Gate predicted that African countries will be hit the most as far as mortality from the pandemic is concerned. Not like it was a difficult prediction to make looking at the trend of events.
That interview with Melinda Gate happened in April of 2020, we are now in 2022 and the cumulative covid related death from Africa, which stood at a little over two hundred thousand as of November 2021, is still significantly lower than that of the US (771,000) and that of Europe (over 1.5 million). This trend is despite the low rollout of vaccines in African countries. As of the beginning of this year, a little over 300 million doses of vaccine have been rolled-out in Africa with a population of over 1.2 billion people. This is as opposed to 6.31 billion doses in Asia with a population of fewer than 5 billion people, and 1.11 billion doses in Europe with a population size of less than 1 billion.
When it comes to malaria, however, the story is entirely different.Covid19 virus ravages the entire world without any boundary but the malaria infection is peculiar to malaria-endemic zones of the world. In 2020 alone according to WHO, there were about 241 million cases of malaria worldwide with Africa responsible for about 95% of all the cases. Not just that, out of a total of 627,000 deaths recorded the same year, about 96% happened in Africa.
With the breakout of the omicron variant of covid19 a few weeks ago, one would expect that measures to curtail the spread of the virus will heighten among the populace. In actual fact, the reverse was the case in Nigeria. Only very few people are seen with nose masks while virtually no one is observing anything close to social distancing. Yes, Nigeria reported cases of omicron variants but it has defied the highly infectious trend observed in other parts of the world.
Instead of our hospitals being filled with cases of the virus, you will see general outpatient departments of Nigerian hospitals being filled with cases of malaria. Even though the incidence of complications and deaths from malaria is quite low when compared to cases of covid in other regions of the world, it will not be totally out of place to opine that Africa is more in need of malaria vaccine than covid vaccines.
Malaria keeps claiming lives annually despite the tons of drugs available to combat the disease and prophylactic measures to limit the infection rate. This can be attributed to a host of factors bordering around cost and access to drugs as well as the resistance of malaria parasites to available treatment. Thus, the vaccine seems to be the final solution to the menace.
The good news is that a malaria vaccine has been developed and approved for distribution and administration. How soon the vaccine will go round remains a concern.
Final Words
There are cases of covid19 infection in Nigeria, no doubt. However, I as a person have only heard about these cases in the news or on social media. This is also the case with many Nigerians and an indication that the rate of infection of the virus is very low compared to Europe and some other parts of the world.
The reverse is the case with malaria. Everyone here either has had bouts of malaria or knows someone with a history. Also, you are guaranteed to find cases of malaria virtually in all the hospitals in the country. Coincidentally, covid19 and malaria infections have many symptoms and treatments in common.
What do you think?