‘Why fever does not always mean malaria’

The head case management branch of the National Malaria elimination programme, Dr Godwin Ntadom has advised people to desist from always thinking of malaria alone when they have fever. Fever means having an abnormally high body temperature or when you body temperatures rises above its normal range and could be accompanied with headache, or shivering. […]

The head case management branch of the National Malaria elimination programme, Dr Godwin Ntadom has advised people to desist from always thinking of malaria alone when they have fever.
Fever means having an abnormally high body temperature or when you body temperatures rises above its normal range and could be accompanied with headache, or shivering.
He stated this while commenting on the World Malaria Report 2015, released last week by the World Health Organisation. According to the report, there is a significant increase in the number of countries moving towards malaria elimination, with prevention efforts saving millions of dollars in healthcare costs over the past 14 years in many African countries.
The report says two countries, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, account for more than 35% of global malaria deaths in 2015.
Ntadom said deaths due to malaria has reduced significantly in the country and why we have really not seen this is because of our mentality that fever must be malaria or always be malaria.
“When people go to do test, they say ‘Oh I did the test and it was negative, I think that the test is not good.’ But the fact is that they don’t have malaria. Once you do a test and it is negative, know that you don’t have malaria. Some people just find it difficult to believe or swallow and would say how can I have fever and you are telling me that it is not malaria?  We don’t just have this challenge with individuals but even health care providers. You see doctors do test and it is negative and they still insist on giving anti-malaria medicine because they don’t believe in themselves and the test,” he explained.
He said now is the period of the year when there is the lowest incidence of malaria because rain is no longer falling, with no breeding spaces or mosquitoes buzzing around, adding that tests done from December to April have a higher chance of being negative for malaria, and the peak transmission season is usually during the rainy season in our environment.
He advised that when people have fever and cough now they should also think that there are other diseases that can cause it.
He said: “Now the weather is changing, we are moving from dry season to rainy season, a lot of dust and bacteria, all these cause fever too. It is not only malaria that causes fever, it could be a viral infection, or bacterial infection but definately it is not malaria when your test is negative to it. And when the test is positive, go for treatment immediately with anti-malaria.”
He said Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo, feature often in malaria deaths because of their huge populations and not because they are not doing anything about it.
According to him, Nigeria has achieved so much in its malaria control efforts in the past few years and has moved down from hyper endemic, that is a situation where about 50% of the population at any time will be tested positive when they have fever, to a meso endemic nature, that is the level that you test about 100 people and less than 25 are positive especially in most urban areas.
Ntadom said although we still have pockets of places in the country that are still highly endemic generally the malaria situation in the country has gone down.
He added that Nigeria still has a lot to do because the target is to get to a point where in every 100 less than five will be positive before achieving a complete elimination in the country.
Some interventions against malaria in the country, he said includes the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC), integrated community case management and awareness creation.
He added that the bulk of resources from this interventions are from Global Fund, UKAID, and USAID among others.