PESHAWAR, Sept 1: Border areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran are faced with the problem of malaria caused by the cross-border movement of people affected by malarial parasite and there is a need to put in place measures to check the spread of the disease in these areas.

"Pakistan reports about 100,000 malaria cases every year, out of which about 50 per cent are reported from 27 high-risk areas which share border either with Iran or Afghanistan," said Dr Atif Munir, Director of the Malaria Control Programme, run by the Ministry of Health.

Speaking on the concluding day of the three-day tri-nation meeting held under the auspices of the World Health Organization here on Wednesday, he said people in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and coastal areas of Sindh and Balochistan were the worst victims of the disease.

"In the event of a cyclone, there occurs an epidemic, which causes more problems to the people, both in term of health and money," he said. There were no authentic figures available regarding number of deaths caused by malaria in Pakistan, however, according to the WHO, about 2,500 person died of malaria every year, Dr Munir said and added that children and pregnant women were among the high-risk groups in the country.

About 70 per cent of malaria patients visited private clinics and, therefore, it was difficult for the government to keep a record either of patients or the mortality rate, he added.

Although the state-run healthcare outlets provided free treatment and diagnostic facilities to malaria patients, people still visited quacks which only compounded their condition, Dr Munir said.

Quite often, patients suffered a relapse either because of being incorrectly diagnosed by a quack or not visiting the doctor in time, he added. About the strategy to control malaria, he said focus was being laid on prompt diagnosis and treatment, spraying of insecticides in the high-risk areas, promotion of culture of use of bed nets and launching of a public awareness campaign regarding preventive measures.

Dr Munir said the Malaria Eradication Programme (MEP), which was launched with the assistance of the WHO and other agencies, was able to bring down the disease occurrence rate quite considerably.

"Withdrawal of assistance by donor agencies caused a big setback to the efforts to completely eradicate the disease because we cannot maintain that situation and the result was a malaria epidemic in Punjab in 1973," he lamented.

Citing WHO's statistics, he said malaria killed one-million people annually, of which 90 per cent happened to be in Africa. The health agency, he said, put in place a Rollback Malaria Programme in 1998 with an objective to reduce disease frequency by 50 per cent by the year 2050.

Dr Munir said the government had provided training to doctors and other health professionals in 28 high-risk districts of the country to arrest the spread of disease. Malaria was a poor-specific disease and if not treated immediately a vicious circle got underway which not only killed the victim but also made the families poorer, he said.

"We are trying to encourage the private sector and launch a crusade against the disease under the public-private partnership," he said. According to him, the government had also devised a strategy about the Malaria Early Warning System to detect the epidemic in time and save the people from getting infected with the disease.