By MICHAEL WAKABI The EastAfrican
There are 3 interesting articles in today’s “The EastAfrican”
The World Health Organisation says half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria and an estimated 243 million cases led to an estimated 863,000 deaths in 2008.
A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds while the disease shaves as much as 1.3 percentage points off GDP in countries with high disease rates. In Uganda, it accounts for 40 per cent of public health expenditure, 30-40 per cent of in patient admissions and up to 60 per cent of outpatient health clinic visits.
As covered in these articles it now seems that good progress is being made by Quality Chemicals and Cipia in creating the necessary infrastructure to enable Uganda to manufacture its own anti-malaria treatments.
These developments are not only good news for the region’s poor, who bear the brunt of the killer disease, but also assures a new income stream for small-scale farmers in western Uganda, who have been contracted to grow the artemisia annua shrub, from which the artemisinin is extracted.
