By Elizabeth Larkwor Baah
Tema, June 20, GNA – Dr Mrs Dorothy Hanson, Medical Officer at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) in Tema, has said cerebral malaria, which occurs due to the delay in the treatment of malaria, can lead to cognitive defects among children.
She said the diseases could also lead to seizures, coma, and a lot more life-threatening sickness, stressing that cerebral malaria in childhood is likely to have effects on behavioural development that may range from subtle to profound.
Dr Mrs Hanson made the disclosure while speaking at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! programme, an initiative of the Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office designed to promote health-related communication and establish a venue for the dissemination of health information to influence people’s individual health decisions.
The Tema Regional Office of the GNA developed the public health advocacy platform “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” to examine the components of four different health communication strategies, namely, informing, instructing, convincing, and advocating.
“If you don’t diagnose it early, it becomes cerebral malaria, so most parents start with paracetamol when the child has a fever, but some continue for too long, and by the time they go to the hospital, malaria has become so fully grown that it becomes cerebral,” she stated.
She expressed worry at the rate at which most parents modulate the severity of malaria and do not take treatment seriously, adding that malaria could be more dangerous than perceived.
The IMaH Medical Officer cautioned parents to reduce self-medication and visit health facilities for appropriate treatment of malaria, stressing that the anti-malaria given to children as per their weight and that failure to follow appropriate prescriptions affects the child’s well-being.
She said people should try their possible best to avoid mosquito bites, sleep under treated mosquito nets, keep their surroundings clean, and adhere to prescriptions for malaria drugs.
She said while Ghana was doing well in the fight against malaria, the public must still do more to help the country achieve a zero malaria rate.
According to Dr Mrs Hanson, the Tema West Municipality had reached the malaria pre-elimination stage, which indicates less than five per cent of OPD cases in the municipality.
She said the nationwide prevalence of malaria had fallen from 38 per cent in 2012 to 98 per cent in 2022.
According to Mr Francis Ameyibor, Regional Manager of GNA Tema, “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” is part of a collaborative effort to establish a means of disseminating health information to influence individual health decisions by increasing health literacy.
GNA