Doctors are attributing malaria-related deaths in children to kidney complications.
According to records from the Ministry of Health, more than 50 percent of the children that develop Acute Kidney Injury –AKI die due to being undiagnosed. The complication refers to a condition where the Kidney stops being able to filter waste from the blood.
It occurs when the malaria parasites damage the red blood cells which leads to the formation of clumps or rosettes which in turn impair the circulation of blood and injure the kidneys in doing so.
The condition is common among children who develop severe malaria. Dr. Jimmy Opigo, the Commissioner of Malaria Control Program attributes the high number of AKI cases to the failure of parents to complete malaria treatment or lack of treatment.
Findings from a 2018 study to ascertain the prevalence of AKI in Kampala and Jinja, 45.3 percent of children with severe malaria developed AKI. This is a 10.6 percent increase compared to the figures for the period 2008-2013.
On average, 42 children succumb to malaria daily in the country according to figures from the Ministry of Health, translating to 15,000 deaths annually.
While the condition can easily be treated or prevented by sleeping under an insecticide-treated mosquito net, Dr. Opigo estimates that the majority of those children are now succumbing to AKI or developing kidney damage because many physicians do not know how to diagnose the condition.
“Many health workers do not know how to diagnose the condition which makes it worsen. One of the things that they should check is whether a child is passing urine. But many do not until it is late and the kidneys are damaged to the extent that the child’s kidney fails completely,” he said.
Children who suffer from malaria are now required to receive dialysis and blood transfusions in addition to malaria medication. This according to medical experts is making the treatment of malaria more complicated than it previously was.
Dr. Anthony Batte, a nephrologist at Kiruddu Referral Hospital says all doctors handling severe malaria cases need to be suspicious and be up to date with new treatment protocols. He says commonly used treatment protocols for malaria cannot be used alone.
“Now doctors need to be more suspicious. They need to be willing to think out of the box and test for more conditions than malaria using an RDT test for malaria. Otherwise, patients will die. For instance, doctors need to know that they should not carry out a blood transfusion without dialysis because this worsens the situation of the child instead of improving it,” he said.
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