MALARIA killed the Scottish explorer David Livingstone, who also suffered from dysentery, on May 1, 1873 at the age of 60 in Chief Chitambo’s Village in the then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
His heart is buried in Africa, under a Mvula tree (now the site of the Livingstone Memorial), although his remains are buried at Westminster Abbey.
Throughout history, infectious diseases and new plagues have surfaced, sometimes displacing former killers that can become minor inconveniences and, with luck, might even be tamed by medicine.
In this part of the world, malaria remains a constant, deadly threat and has for many years plagued travellers, missionaries, soldiers and colonialists.
Efforts to tame this deadly disease have seen medicines like quinine made from the bark of the cinchona tree discovered.
It should be noted that quinine became a tool of 19th-century colonialism with malaria becoming both a barrier to speedy colonisation of Africa and a catalyst that allowed troops to cross malarial lands.
In 1898 British doctor Ronald Ross, who has a hospital in Mufulira named in his honour, confirmed the mosquito was the malaria vector prompting early attempts at mosquito control.
It was, however, not until the Second World War (1939-45) that global action against malaria gained momentum.
Radical malaria eradication crusades include the 1998 World Health Organisation Roll Back Malaria Campaign, a global partnership that was waged in countries like Zambia where numerous local groups, charities and NGOs joined hands to fight the disease.
Using new drug therapies developed from Artemisia, insecticide-impregnated nets and the judicious use of indoor spraying, proponents of the campaign pledged to halve cases by 2010.
However, malaria is still ranked among deadly killers with several deaths attributed to it.
Thus, the announcement of a new malaria drug by the Tropical Diseases Research Centre (TDRC) is welcome.
The TDRC has three scientific departments, namely, Public Health, Clinical Sciences and Biomedical Sciences.
The Public Health Department has personnel qualified in Epidemiology, Social Sciences, Demography, Public Health, Information Technology and Statistics.
The department’s mission is to understand the health problems of communities in urban and rural Zambia, and to define means of controlling them given limited resources devoted to preventive disease control programmes in developing countries in general.
To achieve this goal, the department engages in both field and clinical research with a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on the techniques and perspectives of epidemiology, health systems research, clinical medicine, medical sociology, medical anthropology, nutrition and health economics.
Malaria is no comical disease and contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, and was so pervasive in Rome that it was known as the “Roman fever”.
Malaria is not just a disease commonly associated with poverty: Some evidence suggests that it is also a cause of poverty and a major hindrance to economic development.
It is for this reason that the efforts by institutions like TDRC to eradicate a bothersome and deadly disease like malaria should be hailed.
It is good to note that following persistent cases of malaria in some parts of the country such as Southern Province, the TDRC has unveiled a new drug called ADH, which best suits to combat the tropical disease in the area.
TDRC executive director Modest Mulenga announced the welcome breakthrough in Ndola noticing that the drug would be effective in curbing malaria, let alone eradicating it.
Research is still being pursued to understand whether the ADH,a three-tablet dosage, could be applied in other provinces as well, but in the meantime, Southern Province is the main target.
In this part of the country (Southern), the drug works effectively, better than coartem, another malaria drug used widely in the country.
This good news shows that the local medical research team is able to carry out extensive research to fight common diseases.
The breakthrough is worth commending and shows that Zambian medical experts can achieve what is thought to be impossible and places the country in a good spotlight, in terms of health research. Opinion