DRC: Malaria claiming lives in North Kivu

An epidemic of malaria has again hit the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Women and children remain the most affected by the disease, despite an ongoing distribution campaign for insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

By Passy Mubalama, Goma
Munigi is a small village on the outskirts of North Kivu province’s capital Goma where, as in other parts of the Nyiragongo region, populations are being ravaged by malaria. Due to rampant poverty, families are being forced to make difficult choices.
“We are a family of eleven and we only received one mosquito net. I don’t know what to do,” says Dafroz Chizanye, a desperate mother. “I will set it up in my room since we sleep with the baby, and leave the other children exposed. In order for the children to sleep under the mosquito net, we would have to put the young boys and girls into the same bed and that’s not possible. There is nothing I can do,” she laments.
Shortcomings
During the distribution campaign, which launched on 25 April, many families with over ten members were given a single mosquito net. Others received no net at all.
“I was purely and simply forgotten during the census and so I didn’t get the token [to exchange for a mosquito net]. What am I going to do against the large numbers of mosquitoes in this neighbourhood?” wonders a resident at the Munigi healthcare centre, where the mosquito nets are handed out.
According to the World Malaria Report 2011 published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Africa has the highest incidence of malaria in the world. Children under age five comprise 86 percent of the cases. The DRC is among countries with the highest prevalence of malaria. The child mortality rate for malaria is over 45 percent.
Scepticism
Another Munigi resident, Tina Kavenya, believes that the distribution of mosquito nets is not the solution. “We suffer heavily from malaria around here. What’s the point of me getting a mosquito net while my children are left out? They’ll eventually be bitten and fall sick,” she says.
Some of the measures aimed at tackling malaria, besides nets, are better diagnosis tools and the administration of malaria drugs, especially in rural areas where poor access to healthcare remains a major obstacle. The expensive malaria drugs are currently beyond the means of these poverty-stricken populations. “We can hardly afford food, let alone medicine. The drugs cost between ten and twenty US dollars, if not more,” explains another woman.
Distrust
The distribution campaign for insecticide-treated mosquito nets, which was launched by the Congolese government in partnership with the WHO, has been widely criticised. 
The campaign is not well managed according to François Kitsa Kabumba, a male nurse at the Munigi healthcare centre. For starters, there are logistical problems. “All the mosquito nets are kept at the storage site and we are struggling to move them to the distribution site because there is no vehicle to transport them,” he explains. “And when we run out of stock, the people think we are trying to keep the mosquito nets for ourselves. That is of course not the case.” [related-articles]
But as saying goes, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Many irregularities have been reported around the distribution of the nets, namely their illegal by greedy health agents. This has visibly eroded the people’s trust in both the agents and the campaign.