Climate change threatens to undermine hard-won gains in malaria elimination efforts in Morocco and other countries in Africa.
A recent study published in the Pest Management Science Journal has shown how rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns, and changing environmental conditions are creating an environment conducive for the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
"Climate change is reshaping the landscape of malaria transmission. Our predictive maps offer a crucial tool for anticipating and responding to the threat posed by the expanding range of malaria vectors," says lead author, Outammassine Abdelkrim, a PhD student in the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco.
“In Morocco, the recent increase in international travel and migration from malaria-endemic areas raised awareness of the potential reintroduction of malaria into regions where it had been previously eradicated,” Abdelkrim told Nature Africa.
“This raised important questions about the susceptibility of the country to the re-emergence of malaria and the potential role of climate change in facilitating the expansion of malaria vectors' habitats.”
On the opposite end of the continent, South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province was close to achieving anophelism without malaria (eliminating malaria where malaria carrying mosquitoes still exist), but for the importation of new malaria cases from neighbouring Mozambique.
In a recent study published in the Malaria Journal, researchers studied the successes and shortcomings of the province’s malaria case surveillance system.
“Delayed notification prevents prompt case investigations, hampering case classification and transmission-blocking activities,” says Jaishree Raman, Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and a co-author on the paper.
As in the Morocco case, the South African study revealed that "the majority of the cases detected in KwaZulu-Natal have been classified as imported, suggesting that the province is getting closer to halting local transmission and eliminating malaria," says Raman. She notes that healthcare workers and malaria programme must be made aware of the benefits of prompt case reporting.
