As Covid Slowly Subsides in Maharashtra, Malaria Peeps Back In With Double the Cases in Last 2 Years

With 31 fresh coronavirus cases, Mumbai’s daily tally on March 12 was the lowest the city has seen in over 700 days – April 2020 – when the pandemic began in the country. There was no fresh fatality due to the infection for the sixth consecutive day. The state’s daily cases too remained low, below 400 for the second day, and the death toll due to the virus was two.

While this can be a reason to heave a sigh of relief, increase in prevalence of another disease in the state poses worry. Malaria cases in Maharashtra have doubled in the past two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state economic survey revealed last week.

State surveillance officer Dr Pradip Awate said the rise is a reflection of local factors such as rainfall, population density, among other and added that malaria elimination is still achievable, as per a Times of India report.

BMC officials said that malaria cases in Mumbai had dropped significantly since the last outbreak in 2010 and public health measures such as coordinating with big land owners to carry out anti-malarial measures, carrying out checks by insecticide officers, and not allowing rainwater to accumulate helped.

BMC executive health officer Dr Mangala Gomare was quoted by Times of India as saying the 5000 annual malaria cases are registered annually in the city.

Public health officials said that malaria in urban places such as Mumbai is endemic. “Mumbai has multiple governmental agencies working on multiple infrastructure projects at any given time,” a senior doctor explained, which may cause debris and accumulated water that allow mosquitoes to breed.

The pattern of rise in malaria cases is not restricted to just Maharashtra. As per WHO, the global response to the long-time threat of malaria has taken a hit as the coronavirus pandemic disrupted health services in many countries, leading to tens of thousands more deaths worldwide in 2020.

In the 11 hardest-hit countries, annual cases of malaria grew by 13 million to 163 million between 2015 and 2020, and deaths rose more than 54,000 to nearly 445,000 annually as of last year, WHO said.

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