Cote d'Ivoire: Rate of malaria infection unchanged despite peace
The number of people infected with and dying from malaria in Cote d'Ivoire has not improved over the last five years, despite the end of the civil war in the country, the head of the country's malaria programme Dr. Moïse San Koffi told IRIN.
“Right now, the statistics are stagnant,” he said. Between 2003 and 2008, 172,000 children between zero and five years-old died every year from malaria in Cote d'Ivoire, he said, equivalent to eight children per hour.
Some 60 percent of consultations at state-run health clinics are malaria-related, he added. At least 20 percent of pregnant women have malaria, frequently causing low birth weights among their infants.
