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8/8/2019 Diseases - Malaria - The Burden of Malaria in India (the Hindu- 17 June 2010)
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Newspaper Clipping Service
National Documentation Centre (NDC)
Malaria
The burden of malaria in India (The Hindu:17 June 2010)
Malaria has made a comeback.
ALARM: Estimating the true disease burden of malaria is a challenge.
After heading for eradication in the 1950s and 1960s, malaria has had a resurgence in India. Now a studythat has just been published suggests that the most dangerous form of the disease could be at levels much
higher than previously estimated.
In 1953 when a national eradication programme was launched, some 75 million malaria cases and eightlakh deaths were estimated to be occurring in India which then had a population then of about 360
million. With the eradication programme in full swing, incidence of the disease dropped rapidly. By
1965-66, there were just one lakh cases and deaths were completely eliminated.
But malaria, instead of being wiped out from the country, made a comeback. Obstacles such as insecticide
resistance, changes in mosquito behaviour, drug resistance in the malarial parasites and lack of adequateresources to fight the disease characterised the return of malaria in India, observed V.P. Sharma in a
journal paper. Dr. Sharma was the founder-director of the Malaria Research Centre, now the National
Institute of Malaria Research, in New Delhi.
Infection by Plasmodium falciparum has also risen. This single-celled organism is responsible for muchof the severe cases of malaria and deaths from the disease. Worldwide, it is among the leading causes of
death from a single infectious agent, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
According to figures published by the Union Government's National Vector Borne Disease Control
Programme, there were over 1.5 million cases of malaria, more than half of them caused by P. falciparum,
and 1,068 deaths in 2009.
It is now well accepted that the reported incidence of malaria at the national level on the basis of
surveillance carried out in the primary health care system at best reflects a trend and not the true burden of
8/8/2019 Diseases - Malaria - The Burden of Malaria in India (the Hindu- 17 June 2010)
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