An Introduction to the Mission to The Gambia
Two advantages for The Gambia
A national commitment and
An approach anchored in communities
Two years ago, Mrs Isatou Mboob would barely see her husband. “He was being called ten times a day, and at night also. He had no time to rest and to talk to his family. No time either to work in the fields as he should. But now, this is over. My husband barely leaves home once or twice every other week. Our life has really changed and that makes me very happy.” Mrs Isatou Mboob’s husband is the ambulance driver in Madina Bafuloto. And if he had to drive sick persons so often to the Health Centre, it was because there were so many cases of malaria.
His life has become much more comfortable lately because the situation has changed dramatically in The Gambia, during the two previous years. In the Department of State for Health, in Banjul, Chief Nursing Officer, Mr. Ismail Njie, in charge 1500 nurses, summarises in a few words the advances made in this field, “Now, even during the rain season, and this means during the peak malaria season, you can find empty beds in the Health Centres.”
These local results have now been confirmed in spectacular fashion by a paper in the Lancet entitled “Changes in malaria indices between 1999 and 2007 in The Gambia: a retrospective analysis” authored by members of the UK Medical Research Council. Here is one headline statistic. In the four sites that the group studied, the proportion of malaria positive slides declined between 1999 and 2007 by 82%, 85%, 73% and 50%. Here is their interpretation of their findings. “A large proportion of the malaria burden has been alleviated in The Gambia. Our results encourage consideration of a policy to eliminate malaria as a public-health problem.”
So, what has been going on?