Malaria resurgence in Senegal: measuring malaria mortality in Mlomp
Malaria is one of the leading causes of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. With the development of drug-resistant parasites, the fight against malaria has become complex, and because demographic and health data are scarce in the most hard-hit countries, the impact of the disease is difficult to evaluate. Demographic surveillance sites provide a means to measure levels and trends in mortality and causes of death. The data they provide are not exhaustive, however, for malaria in particular. At the Mlomp site in Senegal, information from inhabitants can be matched against data from local health facilities for more precise study of malaria mortality. From very low levels in the late 1980s, malaria mortality increased as the Plasmodium falciparum became resistant to chloroquine, the standard drug which, until then, had been an effective treatment. Although the introduction of new treatments in the early 2000s reduced diagnosed malaria mortality, the adoption of a broad definition of deaths attributable to malaria shows that the disease still accounts for a large share of mortality.