Rabindra Abeyasinghe, acting director of the government's anti-malaria campaign, told U.N. humanitarian news agency IRIN, that the country would have had an easier time fighting the disease if it had been able to move about freely in the northern areas of the country that are controlled by Tamil Tiger separatists.
He said that even in those areas they had nearly wiped the disease out, however, much of the country is in a dry season now and Abeyasinghe told IRIN the government wouldn't know how effective its program has been until the rainy mosquito season.
"Elimination means we have to get rid of the pockets of the disease that we have now," Abeyasinghe told IRIN. But he expressed confidence Sri Lanka could do it pointing to there success in eliminating the once common diseases of leprosy and polio.
And speaking of polio, it was a vaccine that helped finally eradicate that disease around the world and in a Malaria Community Statement issued by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, the need for developing a malaria vaccine was emphasized.
The group said that new tools in the fight against malaria were important as some of the drugs were losing effectiveness.
"We must increase investment in developing new, improved technologies for controlling malaria, including effective drugs, insecticides and vaccines. Resistance to the most commonly prescribed drugs in most countries has been rapidly increasing," the group said in its statement.
Roll Back Malaria Partnership was started in 1998 by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. It now has a broad range of partners that include malaria-endemic countries, their bilateral and multilateral development partners, the private sector, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, foundations, and research and academic institutions, according to a statement on its website.
