{"id":568,"date":"2014-09-17T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=568"},"modified":"2016-10-28T14:08:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T13:08:31","slug":"ebola-and-malaria-some-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/09\/17\/ebola-and-malaria-some-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebola and malaria: some facts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many friends and colleagues have told me they&#8217;re relieved that I&#8217;m back from Africa. The Ebola outbreak kept them worried about me \u2013 even though I was in safe areas. While in Nigeria,\u00a0my friends there were alarmed when one night I got several mosquito bites \u2013 even though I was taking malaria pills. I do appreciate my friends&#8217; concerns: Thank &#8220;y&#8217;all&#8221;! I thought it would be interesting to unearth some facts about these diseases.<\/p>\n<p>In recent months, we have seen a growing concern about the consequences of the Ebola epidemic. Out of roughly 4,300 people infected, nearly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dw.de\/ebola-death-toll-rises-to-nearly-2300\/a-17910956\">2,300 have died<\/a> in 2014. It&#8217;s great to see the mobilization of resources that&#8217;s taking place to combat this devastating disease: efforts to treat those infected, to accelerate vaccine testing, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are more prevalent diseases in Africa. This is the case of malaria, as we all know. Some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.who.int\/features\/factfiles\/malaria\/malaria_facts\/en\/\">facts <\/a>reported by the World Health Organization <a href=\"http:\/\/www.who.int\/en\/\">(WHO)<\/a>:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_570\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-570\" style=\"width: 153px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/09\/2014-05-23-21.45.57-e1410856926924.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-570\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/09\/2014-05-23-21.45.57-e1410856926924-153x300.jpg\" alt=\"Mosqioto nets: a traditional malaria-prevention mechanism\" width=\"153\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/09\/2014-05-23-21.45.57-e1410856926924-153x300.jpg 153w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/09\/2014-05-23-21.45.57-e1410856926924-524x1024.jpg 524w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2014\/09\/2014-05-23-21.45.57-e1410856926924.jpg 1664w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 153px) 100vw, 153px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-570\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mosquito nets: a traditional malaria-prevention mechanism<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>half of the world&#8217;s population is at risk of malaria, with an estimated 627,000 malaria deaths every year;<\/li>\n<li>in 2012, 90% of malaria deaths occurred in Africa;<\/li>\n<li>about 460,000 African children die of malaria before the age of five;<\/li>\n<li>some good news: malaria deaths have fallen by 42% since 2000.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230; and there&#8217;s no malaria vaccine! Isn&#8217;t it amazing? The Malaria Vaccine Initiative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.malariavaccine.org\/index.php\">(MVI)<\/a> attributes it to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the absence of a traditional market,<\/li>\n<li>few developers, and<\/li>\n<li>the technical complexity of developing any vaccine against a parasite.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wonder if we in the Western world would have reacted to Ebola the way we have if we hadn&#8217;t seen it as a threat to us, the &#8220;traditional market&#8221;\u2026 What do you think?<\/p>\n<p>My sympathies go to all affected by either disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many friends and colleagues have told me they&#8217;re relieved that I&#8217;m back from Africa. The Ebola outbreak kept them worried about me \u2013 even though I was in safe areas. While in Nigeria,\u00a0my friends there were alarmed when one night I got several mosquito bites \u2013 even though I was taking malaria pills. I do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99579,993,99106],"tags":[814,100495,1147,1469,1502],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-economic-and-institutional-context","category-living-conditions","category-future-and-perspectives-for-africa","tag-healthcare","tag-malaria-vaccine-initiative","tag-poverty","tag-west-africa","tag-world-health-organization","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}