Zimpapers Logo

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The 2013-2014 rainy season is now on Zimbabwe and in some regions it has already left pools or puddles in which disease-carrying vectors can breed and multiply. It is fortunate in spite of the numerous water-borne diseases that Zimbabwe is primarily an agricultural nation whose livelihood is dependent on rain.

So, we pray for plentiful rain and but hope to deal with some of the common rainy season ailments as part of our socio-cultural activities supported to a large extent by either government or quasi-government organisations.

We shall in this opinion article look at two very common diseases whose incidence is very high in some geographical regions of Zimbabwe. Malaria is the very first.  It is endemic in Zimbabwe’s lowveld, a low lying geographical region that covers almost 60 percent of the whole country and 70 percent of communal areas.

The other is bilharzia whose vector is a type of water snail that occurs in wet, swampy areas.  This ailment appears to be resurging after recent reports that it is affecting more children.  The Government and some of its partners recently responded to this resurgence by rolling out a nationwide exercise to give medication to children at schools, clinics and hospitals. The treatment of children against intestinal worms and bilharzia entered its fifth day on Sunday.  The Government set a target of reaching out to four million children.  Epidemiology and disease control director in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Dr Portia Manangazira said the process started well at most centres  throughout the country last week.  The exercise was informed by a national survey conducted in 2010 which identified areas which needed the treatment.

Areas with a high burden of bilharzia will be receiving the Praziquantel drug, while those with a high worm burden will receive Albendazole tablets. Those children with both parasites are receiving both drugs.

Malaria is also called ague or chills or fever. It is caused by one or more types of parasites introduced into the human blood stream by the bite of an anopheles mosquito that has previously bitten someone else with malaria.  The four types of that parasite are plasmodium vivax, plasmodium ovale, plasmodium malariae and plasmodium falciparum.

Vivax and what is called tertian malaria are caused by the plasmodium vivax and the plasmodium ovale. Theirs is the most common type of malaria and is the mildest. It is also the most likely to recur.

A person with the vivax kind of malaria experiences fever every second day. A tertian malaria victim has fever every third day. Fever may occur daily if the infection is as a result of a double brood of these parasites.  One brood will cause fever on days one, three and five, and the other will manifest its effects through fever attacks on days two, four and six.

A third type is called the quartan malaria and is caused by the parasite plasmodium malariae. It is more severe than the vivax type. Its fever convulsions occur every three days. But in the event of double infection, the paroxysms are experienced on days one and two, and again on days four and five. Going to the hospital without delay is advisable.

The fourth type of malaria is caused by the plasmodium falciparum parasite.  This is the most serious of this terrible malady. It often results in fatal cases of cerebral malaria or at times black water fever.

Some ignorant people think that paroxysms are caused by assaults by goblins (imikhoba, zwitwuwhane, zvikwambo).  Of course nothing can be more nonsensical than such a belief. They are caused by merely the various types of the plasmodium as already stated.
It is sometimes most unfortunate that some school teachers are counted among these ignoramuses.  The reader will note that the author of this article says “some” school teachers.  “Some” does not mean “all.”

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Hope Fountain Teacher Training Institute had in its syllabus lessons on some common tropical disease such as bilharzia and malaria.

Miss Joyce Childs delivered those very unforgettable lessons to prepare the would-be teachers for the socio-cultural environment out there such as the lowveld where the white minority settler administration had forcibly relocated a large number of blacks to make room for a few of their kith and kin in the country’s healthier regions.

She would also deal with bilharzia minus; of course, the complicated scientific names and words the students could not pronounce let alone remember.

There are two types of bilharzias: one in which the parasites (schistosoma hermatobium) infects the bladder and the other in which the parasites (schistosoma mansoni) lodge in the victim’s intestines and increase.

Bilharzia gems are water-borne and that is why more boys than girls are victims of this debilitating disease. In the case of bilharzia of the bladder, the sufferer passes blood in his urine. In that of the intestines, the victim’s stools are bloody.

In all these experiences, people can prevent these by eliminating stagnant water near their residences and by boiling their drinking water.
Teachers need to be sensitised to these water-borne ailments. They should teach about them most religiously, and every school should have a few thermometers to enable pupils and students to understand their physical environment.

My feelings are that virtually every school can afford to establish and run a small laboratory with basic equipment and instruments.  These would include a small paraffin refrigerator, portable scales, small lamps and torches as well as thermometers.

Malaria and bilharzia used to cause a great deal of misery in and around Rome a century or two ago. These days people of that ancient city talk about them only as reference points in the tragic aspects of their otherwise glorious history. Zimbabwe can do much better with a little planning.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist.  He can be contacted on o734328136 or email [email protected].