Dr Kone Vanormelingen, UNICEF representative in Angola, believes good progress is being made in the country s fight against the disease, which is financed in partnership with the Angolan government and ministry of health.
He said Angolan malaria statistics were unreliable, especially because as services have improved, so has reporting. But through monitoring indicators such as distribution of bed nets and medication, pre-emptive treatment of pregnant women and indoor residual spraying, a positive pattern was emerging.
International evidence has shown that with 80 percent coverage with mosquito nets and treatment of cases with combination therapy, then morbidity (number of cases) is reduced by 50 percent and mortality by 20 percent, he explained.
Dr Vanormelingen said that during 2008 and 2009 UNICEF had distributed 2.5 million mosquito nets. This year the organisation has given out 500,000, with 300,000 more to go.
He added that the latest studies showed that close to one fifth of pregnant women and children under five were reported to be using insecticide-treated nets. But while the net distribution scheme has been a major step forward, not everyone with a net is using it, according to Nana Frimpong, PSI s Angola country director.
He said focus studies had revealed some people didn t sleep under the nets because they thought it would make them too hot. Others simply didn t know how to hang them up properly.
Knowing this, Frimpong explained, We now make sure we give net-hanging demonstrations when we distribute the nets because there is no point in people having nets in their homes if they don t use them.
But Frimpong feels things are moving in the right direction.
We were in Cunene last week in the south of Angola and they told us that in one municipality there no-one had died of malaria in the last three months.
This is a start and a move in the right direction, he said.
Outside the health centre in Luanda, people continue to wait patiently for their turn.
