Tropical Diseases Essay Research Paper Women — страница 3

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mosquitoes). Also, such local coping mechanisms, and or capacities should be explored. In the last two decades, it is estimated that 40 per cent of fevers are due to malaria (Brinkman and Brinkman, 1991), therefore, strategies for the control of malaria have shifted with a major focus on reducing mortality and morbidity with prompt and presumptive treatment of fever. There has also been increasing recognition that the success of any control strategy would depend on a number of factors including the behaviour of patients especially mothers and caretakers of young children, the need to understand treatment seeking behaviours (Oaks et al, 1991) the choice of treatment. Research studies have shown that women’s choice and time of treatment are dependent on such factors as: a) cost;

b) access to health facilities ;attitudes of providers, cultural beliefs about the cause and treatment of malaria. Self-medication is a common approach by people when they experience signs and symptoms of malaria. Given the high incidence of malaria in Africa, the lack of or near absence of laboratory facilities at peripheral levels for clinical (biomedical) diagnosis, malaria has remained a problematic issue. Studies for a better understanding of the criteria used by women and village health workers in predicting malaria are highly desirable. Such studies, will afford experts insights into malaria transmission modes and have already been identified in Nigeria (Okonofua et al, 1992), Liberia (Jackson, 1985) and in Zimbabwe. The transmission of malaria is not, and should not be

seen as a matter for only health professionals. Because women are the primary care takers control initiatives as the Roll Back Malaria should focus on and harness the benefits of participatory planning by involving women from the outset in the determination of the needs and priorities of malaria control, planning and implementing measures that are feasible and acceptable to improve health. The role women can play in malaria control partnership programme will be discussed later in this paper. In order to establish sustainable control programmes, strong partnerships between local women’s groups and health services is necessary. It must be recognized that as stake holders, the lead role must be shared by both in the control of malaria at least until Africa can boast of adequate

number of trained health staff and availability of functional facilities at the peripheral levels. Presently, the acute lack of both staff and facility at the peripheral level underscores the need for the role of women in the home treatment of malaria and in control to be encouraged. In order to circumvent this anomaly, active involvement of communities, in particular, women’s groups to the fullest extent possible, should be an integral part of policy in malaria control for every country in the subregion. TUBERCULOSIS Tuberculosis is the single biggest infectious killer in women. It kills nearly 2 – 3 million people yearly. It is primarily a lung infection caused by inhalation of droplets containing tubercle bacilli of cough spray from tuberculosis patients. Mycobactarium

tuberculosis and M. Africanum are two predominant causative strains in Africa. In many Sub-Saharan African countries especially Central and East Africa, the incidence of TB has increased with the advent and increasing occurrence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositivity. In a number of these countries one in three people with HIV die from TB due to neglect, they also infect hundreds of HIV-negative persons with TB bacteria. Surprisingly, policy makers in most Sub-Saharan African countries are still unaware that TB is a great threat, that 95 per cent of the eight million new TB cases every year occur in developing countries, Africa with an incidence of 272 per 100,000 population which is approximately a ten-fold incidence rate compared with an incidence rate of 27 per

100,000 for European countries. Equally sad is the observation that many policy makers have continued to neglect TB despite current knowledge that untreated TB follows a rapidly fatal course in HIV infected persons – hence Chreiten (1990) reference to both diseases as “the cursed duet”. The presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis leads to accelerated replication of HIV; evidence that AIDS and TB accelerate each other has been documented (Pope et al, 1993). Worst still, in HIV sero-positive TB patients, because of poor health status, there is increase incidence of adverse reactions to available drugs and poor response to therapy compliance to TB therapy is as low as 30 – 45 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to WHO Global Tuberculosis Programme (GTP) recent reports