Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami

One year ago, the authors of this article reported in this journal on the malaria situation in Sri Lanka prior to the tsunami that hit on 26 December 2004, and estimated the likelihood of a post-tsunami malaria outbreak to be low. Malaria incidence has decreased in 2005 as compared to 2004 in most d...

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Main Authors:	Briët, Olivier JT, Galappaththy, Gawrie NL, Amerasinghe, Priyanie H, Konradsen, Flemming
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	BioMed Central 2006
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475594/

id	pubmed-1475594
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-14755942006-06-08 Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami Briët, Olivier JT Galappaththy, Gawrie NL Amerasinghe, Priyanie H Konradsen, Flemming Commentary One year ago, the authors of this article reported in this journal on the malaria situation in Sri Lanka prior to the tsunami that hit on 26 December 2004, and estimated the likelihood of a post-tsunami malaria outbreak to be low. Malaria incidence has decreased in 2005 as compared to 2004 in most districts, including the ones that were hit hardest by the tsunami. The malaria incidence (aggregated for the whole country) in 2005 followed the downward trend that started in 2000. However, surveillance was somewhat affected by the tsunami in some coastal areas and the actual incidence in these areas may have been higher than recorded, although there were no indications of this and it is unlikely to have affected the overall trend significantly. The focus of national and international post tsunami malaria control efforts was supply of antimalarials, distribution of impregnated mosquito nets and increased monitoring in the affected area. Internationally donated antimalarials were either redundant or did not comply with national drug policy, however, few seem to have entered circulation outside government control. Despite distribution of mosquito nets, still a large population is relatively exposed to mosquito bites due to inadequate housing. There were no indications of increased malaria vector abundance. Overall it is concluded that the tsunami has not negatively influenced the malaria situation in Sri Lanka. BioMed Central 2006-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC1475594/ /pubmed/16700913 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-5-42 Text en Copyright © 2006 Briët et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Briët, Olivier JT Galappaththy, Gawrie NL Amerasinghe, Priyanie H Konradsen, Flemming
spellingShingle	Briët, Olivier JT Galappaththy, Gawrie NL Amerasinghe, Priyanie H Konradsen, Flemming Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
author_facet	Briët, Olivier JT Galappaththy, Gawrie NL Amerasinghe, Priyanie H Konradsen, Flemming
author_sort	Briët, Olivier JT
title	Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
title_short	Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
title_full	Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
title_fullStr	Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
title_full_unstemmed	Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami
title_sort	malaria in sri lanka: one year post-tsunami
description	One year ago, the authors of this article reported in this journal on the malaria situation in Sri Lanka prior to the tsunami that hit on 26 December 2004, and estimated the likelihood of a post-tsunami malaria outbreak to be low. Malaria incidence has decreased in 2005 as compared to 2004 in most districts, including the ones that were hit hardest by the tsunami. The malaria incidence (aggregated for the whole country) in 2005 followed the downward trend that started in 2000. However, surveillance was somewhat affected by the tsunami in some coastal areas and the actual incidence in these areas may have been higher than recorded, although there were no indications of this and it is unlikely to have affected the overall trend significantly. The focus of national and international post tsunami malaria control efforts was supply of antimalarials, distribution of impregnated mosquito nets and increased monitoring in the affected area. Internationally donated antimalarials were either redundant or did not comply with national drug policy, however, few seem to have entered circulation outside government control. Despite distribution of mosquito nets, still a large population is relatively exposed to mosquito bites due to inadequate housing. There were no indications of increased malaria vector abundance. Overall it is concluded that the tsunami has not negatively influenced the malaria situation in Sri Lanka.
publisher	BioMed Central
publishDate	2006
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475594/
_version_	1611383921801428992

Malaria in Sri Lanka: one year post-tsunami

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