African Nationals to be prevented from entering Algeria without vaccinations notebooks

Ministry of Health and Hospital Reform in coordination with the Interior Ministry launched a new procedure to prevent Africans who come from countries where malaria is widespread from entering to Algeria without a vaccination notebook, in order to reduce the spread of malaria in many Wilayas like Oran, Mostaganem, Batna and Ghardaia.

Dr. Salim Grass, a specialist in the microbial diseases told Echorouk that experts met at the Ministry of Health on Monday to study the causes and the reality of malaria outbreaks in Algeria, and concluded that most of the recorded cases are caused by transmission of the disease from African countries that are the origin for the spread of the disease, whether by fans or by foreign Africans who arrive to Algeria, and who were classified by doctors as the most common reasons leading to the spread of the disease.

Professor Bekat Berkani, first dean of doctors expressed astonishment because the Algerian authorities did not compel the African migrants to provide a vaccination notebook saying; “Algeria committed a big mistake by not imposing this vaccination. Asking Africans who are coming to Algeria to provide a vaccination notebook is the first step to face malaria, and this was applied by the Ministry of Health in coordination with the Interior Ministry.”

For his part, Professor Ismail Mesbah, General Manager of Prevention at the level of the Ministry of Health and Hospital Reform asserted that Algeria recorded during the sixties 100.000 malaria annually, obliging it to launch an emergency plan to combat the disease, which completely disappeared during the seventies, adding that cases of malaria in Batna, Mostaganem and Algiers are cases that were imported from other countries.

“Local cases have been recorded only in Ghardaia, as it the epidemiological area which is locally isolated”.

As for the increasing prevalence of malaria amid fans who returned from Burkina Faso, Professor Abdelkarim Soukhal, a specialist in epidemiology at the hospital of Beni Massous (Algiers), said that most of the fans stopped taking antimalarial drug, adding that the vaccine alone is not enough to prevent the disease, but must take medication weeks before going to Burkina Faso and four weeks after returning from there, and this is what 70% of fans did not apply, causing the injury of many of them with malaria.

“I call upon all the fans who returned from Burkina Faso to go to the nearest hospital in order to do the necessary analysis”.

“Malaria or fever of swamps is not an infectious disease, as it is a disease that kills the human being without the rest of the creatures and is caused by a killing parasite which is transmitted by female mosquitoes called Anopheles, as the parasite that causes malaria was discovered in 1880 at the military hospital of Constantine, Eastern Algeria.

There are two types of malaria offices, which are less risky and more responsive to treatment, and malignant, may be very serious and require the provision of necessary health care and in the fastest time.

There are two categories of malaria. Malignant malaria (also known as falciparum malaria) causes symptoms within six months of infection and can be mild or severe. It’s caused by one type of malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Benign malaria is less severe but may have a dormant stage of up to a year and can cause relapses. This is mostly caused by one of the other three types of malaria parasite.