Malaria has killed 329 people in Zimbabwe since the beginning of this year, according to the malaria statistics issued by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare on Monday.
The statistics showed that a total of 267,396 reported malaria cases, 329 deaths were recorded from January to April of this year.
This figure is a massive reduction from the 567 deaths and 300,021 cases reported during the same period last year.
I wonder how accurate the death rate is...You see, the Mashona don't have native immunity to malaria...
Most people live in higher altitudes were malaria used to be rare...Ironically, since where I lived was 5000 feet altitude, we saw no cases--except in one of our nuns who had visited the lowveldt (lower altitude area)...indeed, we had two nuns who contracted cerebral malaria when I was in Africa, one Irish nun at our mission, and one African nun at a nearby mission...I did not take anti malarials in Zimbabwe. Indeed, we saw very few patients with it, mostly visitors...
The Europeans had confiscated nearby African land and resettled the locals to near Kwekwe...into a malaria area, and many of them did develop malaria in the new "free" lands...because they had no native resistance...and many died....something to remember when you hear crying over confiscation of European farms.
(my objection is that they need these farms for food, and that they are not given to the farmworkers, like the land reform here in the Philippines, but often given to cronies of the government to run, and they can't run them).
Most of my malaria experience was in Liberia, where I had malaria and treated many many cases...
So it makes me wonder is now malaria is in higher elevations....
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