For the past 20 years, Malaria in Ghana and Africa has become a very critical issue. Many people die due to malaria and till today, malaria remains one of the major causes of death in Ghana and Africa. African governments borrow a lot of money from other countries to fight this disease. It is good to see that steps are being taken to solve the problem of Malaria. This is very good. But I think that if we do not identify the main cause of the problem and try to solve it, all our efforts will fail. The reason why Malaria is still dominant in Ghana and Africa is because we fail to identify the major cause of malaria.
Governments use a lot of money to buy mosquito nets and all other methods to try to prevent malaria. I think the main cause of malaria is the filth that can be found almost everywhere. Ghana is filthy. Choked gutters, stagnant water and littered streets are now normal things in Ghana and these are the areas where mosquitoes breed.
It is very critical for governments to prevent citizens from making the environment filthy than spending a lot of money on solutions which will not put a permanent stop to the problem. There is a very common saying which goes like this: “If you want to get rid of the cobwebs, kill the spider”. This goes to show that if we do not tackle the issue of malaria from the root, it will always live with us just as the filth lives with us. As long as there is filth, there will be malaria.
