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Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
THE Global Fund will avail $24 million to eight Sadc countries including Zimbabwe, for anti-malaria programmes amid revelations the country was making tremendous progress in the fight to eradicate the disease.

The eight countries that make up the E8 group are Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Malaria is the third deadliest killer disease after cancer and AIDS in Africa.

There are four stages in its fight namely malaria control, pre-elimination, elimination as well as eradication and Zimbabwe is now in the pre-elimination stage.

Sadc coordinator for Southern African Regional Network (SARN) which is responsible for Roll Back Malaria (RBM) programmes Colonel Doctor Kaka Mudambo told Chronicle that although malaria was still prevalent along borders with Mutasa in Manicaland having the highest prevalence of 300 cases per every 1,000 people, national prevalence had dropped to only 29 per 1,000 which is manageable.

Col Mudambo was speaking in Victoria Falls on the sidelines of a SARN meeting where they were drafting an E8 Global Fund proposal in preparation for the release of the money.

“We’re meeting here as Malaria Elimination countries (E8) to develop the Global Fund concept for submission on January 30, 2015. We’re working on a proposal to get money from the Global Fund after we were told that we’re eligible for $24 million,” said Col Mudambo on the sidelines of the meeting which ended yesterday.

He said the money once released, would be used for a number of anti-malaria activities.

Col Mudambo said the region was seized with cross border malaria transmission which was making the fight against the disease difficult.

“Our technical panel was looking at the proposal to see if it’s within Global Fund requirements. The problem we have is that there’re many people moving across borders carrying malaria parasites,” he said, adding that it was difficult to tell how many people were carriers of parasites since some use road while others use air transport.

Col Mudambo challenged the political leadership to ensure health care was accessible at the countries’ borders and in remote areas, as he singled out the Zambezi valley as one of such areas.

“We’re still debating as a group to see how we can deal with people’s movement because screening is cumbersome and requires a lot of resources,” said Col Mudambo.

“We’re trying to see how best travellers can be informed and one option is having posters at border posts where people can undergo healthcare.”

Zimbabwe uses indoor residual spraying in place of dichloro-dyphenil-trichloroethane (DDT) whose use is contentious worldwide.

DDT causes complications in pregnant women, among other side effects.

Col Mudambo reiterated that Matabeleland South province was leading in the fight against malaria while 20 more districts have scaled up their programmes.

‘‘Mutasa has the highest prevalence at 300 per thousand’’, said Col Mudambo.

Areas most prone to the disease are along the country’s borders such as Chipinge, Chimanimani due to closeness to Mozambique, Beitbridge, and Zambezi Valley among others.

The Sadc countries have set 2020 as the target for the first phase of elimination and 2030 as the year when the region should have eradicated the disease.

“We measure our programmes by attaining zero transmission and we’re happy on average we’re at 29/1,000 as a country and we’re pushing that as a region, the figures get to zero by 2030,” added Col Mudambo.