Fighting Malaria in Africa

Posted on 25 December 2009.

In recent years, China's involvement in Africa has proved controversial. The Chinese have already invested a large amount of money in the continent and at the end of 2009 Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged a further US$10 billion in concessional loans over the next three years.

Trade between the two areas is also flourishing. In 2008, "Sino-Africa trade exceeded the $100 billion mark, a jump of 45 percent on the year before, fuelled at one end by China's demand for Africa's energy and natural resources, and Africa's love of cheap Chinese goods at the other," according to Reuters. Yet such investment has also brought "allegations from emerging countries that China is stripping them of resources", "suspicions in the developed world that obscure state interests lurk behind Chinese investments" and tensions with local job-seekers when Chinese firms import their own workers.

One project, however, has clearly had a very positive impact. In 2006, China pledged to help Africa fight malaria and has since set up 30 anti-malaria and prevention units. A Chinese-backed malaria eradication programme has transformed the health of the island of Moheli, part of the Comoros group.

The entire population of 36,000 on Moheli took two courses of anti-malarial drugs forty days apart and the results were startling. "While the parasite carrier rate in Moheli ranged from 5 to 94 percent from village to village before the exercise, that fell to 1 percent or less from January 2008 and has stayed around that figure since." Comoros now bars anyone from entering Moheli unless they take a course of anti-malarial drugs that China provides for free. According to the man spearheading the project, "Before, 70 to 80 percent of hospital patients were there for malaria. After that, you hardly find any."

Now the Comoros government has asked China to roll out the same programme on two larger islands. Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria have also begun farming hybrids of the rare Chinese sweet wormwood shrub from which artemisinin - the best drug to fight malaria - is derived. "China is exploring cost effective ways to help the Third World and is interested in making distinct contributions," according to Professor Joseph Cheng of City University, Hong Kong. (All quotes taken from Reuters.)

Give thanks to the Lord for the very positive impact of the China-backed anti-malaria campaign on Moheli. Pray for similar breakthroughs on the other islands as the campaign spreads.

Pray for China's continuing involvement in the fight against malaria, and that their experience in Comoros might be used to good effect in other parts of Africa and the world.

Pray for Chinese companies investing in Africa. Pray that they might bear in mind cultural sensitivities and that their investment might be of real benefit to the local people.

Pray for the Chinese authorities to invest in more projects like the anti-malaria campaigns that will make a difference in the lives of people in poorer countries.