World Malaria Day 2009

Today is World Malaria Day and Angola has reason to celebrate. On Tuesday, Angola’s National Malaria Control Programme (PNCM) announced that “the death rate has been decreasing for the past two years due to the epidemiological coverage being implemented nationwide”. In 2008, there were about three million simple cases and 200,000 of serious cases with 9,000 deaths were registered in Angola. Read the story on AllAfrica.com.

To mark World Malaria Day in Angola, the inaugeration of the country’s first health research centre took place this afternoon in Caxito (a city north of Luanda). Researchers at the centre will study diseases including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AID. The research centre was created as an initiative between the governments of Angola, Portugual and the Colouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Read ANGOP’s full article.