Mary Achieng’s family frequently stays in the malaria ward at Nightingale Hospital in western Kenya every month. During her trip in late August, she and her two sons, who are 4 and 12 years old, are receiving medical care. All three are getting better from a sickness that has caused a lot of damage in their area for a long time.
Malaria has affected my family severely. I spend around $35 on medication every month. Then, the next month, someone gets sick again. “I’m currently at the hospital, my children are not at school, and I haven’t been able to start my business,” she said to CNN.
Achieng lives in a place called Kisumu in Kenya. It’s a hot and sticky area near a lake, which is perfect for mosquitoes that spread malaria. She is one of 14 million people in Kenya who live in places where malaria is common. These people face the challenge of dealing with a disease that causes around 10,000 deaths in the country each year.
There are worries that malaria is spreading to new places in the country. This is concerning because a new vaccine for mosquitoes is being developed, and people hope it will help get rid of the disease forever.
The reason for something happening is climate change.
Mosquitoes like warm and humid weather. The human-caused climate crisis is making heat waves and storms happen more often, creating more places for mosquitoes to breed.
In Kenya, like in other parts of Africa, mosquitoes that spread malaria are causing problems for communities where malaria outbreaks used to be rare.
Kenyan scientists from KEMRI are studying cases of malaria in people who haven’t traveled to areas where malaria was common before.
This includes areas like the Kikuyu highlands, which are near the capital city Nairobi. Scientists recently discovered malaria-carrying mosquitoes there for the first time. According to a recent report, there has been a big rise in temperatures in the area. Over the past 60 years, it has warmed up by about 1. 3This increase could be one of the main reasons for the changes happening.
Steve Ngugi, who lives in Kikuyu and is 45 years old, was surprised to find out in February that he had malaria even though he hadn’t been to a place where there is malaria. It was the first time in his life that he got the disease. He was very sick and scared for his life because of malaria for three months, since he had almost no protection against it. He felt very weak during this time.
Gitahi Githinji, who works for the nonprofit organization Amref Health Africa in Nairobi, said that the way mosquitoes spread malaria is changing quickly because of global warming. “And we can see that the public health system is not ready for this sudden increase,” he said to CNN.
This is a big problem in Africa. Africa has 95% of the cases of malaria. This disease kills over 600,000 people every year, and many of them are children.
A new report discovered that mosquitoes that spread malaria are now flying at higher elevations in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, they are climbing 21 feet higher each year for the past 120 years. According to the report authors, it is a speed that happens as a result of climate change.
Richard Munang, who works for the UN’s environmental agency, said that as cooler places are getting warmer, the mosquito population is growing and causing more cases of malaria in those areas.
Experts are saying that the climate crisis is speeding up and that other continents are also in danger.
Munang said that what is happening in Africa will slowly happen in other places too. This is because as the climate gets warmer and temperatures change, mosquitoes that carry malaria are moving to other places where they can survive well. He said that as the bugs go to new places, people will need to leave.
We have good news about fighting malaria. Scientists and health experts have made progress in fighting the disease in the past 20 years by using different ways to prevent it.
In Kenya, giving out bednets with insecticide and giving medicine to prevent malaria, along with campaigns that inform everyone in the country, have helped malaria go down a lot.
Now that the first malaria vaccine is available, people are hopeful that malaria can eventually be completely eradicated.
About 17 million children in Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi have received the vaccine since it was introduced in 2019. This has led to a significant decrease in the number of severe malaria cases and child deaths.
So it’s a sad situation that while Kenya is celebrating the progress it has made, there are now new types of malaria and more cases appearing in areas that used to have a low risk.
Damaris Matoke-Muhia, a scientist at the Malaria Lab of KEMRI, said that we were very close to reducing the number of cases to a very low level, almost undetectable.
But climate change means there are more mosquitoes now, she told CNN. We are discovering new types of living things. “We are noticing malaria spreading to unexpected locations,” she said. “She said we are starting from the beginning again. ”
If the Earth keeps getting warmer, Matoke-Muhia believes that the situation with malaria might be different in the future.
“If things keep happening this way,” she said, “we need to start over, come up with new ways to help. ”