Hello Mums and Blog visitors!
Though our blog is primarily dedicated to health educating and answering healthcare questions by Mums, we have found that health education must be started early with the children!
Yes, we need to catch them young! Children can learn a lot about health and also be great instruments in disseminating health information.
So, we will be sharing with you in the next few posts 100 Health Messages in 10 priority topics for children to learn and share. These messages were developed by Clare Hanbury and her team at the Children for Health, an organization dedicated to the promotion of health education in developing countries, focused on developing children as ambassadors and communicators of essential health messages in their communities.
Read, teach your children and share. Keep checking for new posts until all the 100 messages are completed.
Priority Area for Today – The first 10 messages on Malaria
MALARIA
- Malaria is a disease spread by the bite of an infected mosquito.
- Malaria is dangerous. It causes fever & can kill, especially children & pregnant women.
- Prevent malaria by sleeping under insecticide treated bed nets that kill mosquitoes & stop them biting
- Malaria mosquitoes often bite between sunset & sunrise.
- When children get malaria they may grow and develop more slowly.
- There are three types of insecticide spraying to kill malaria mosquitoes: in houses, in the air & onto water.
- The signs for malaria are high fever, headaches, muscle & stomach aches & chills. Rapid tests and treatment saves lives.
- Malaria can be prevented & treated with medicine as directed by a health worker.
- Malaria lives in an infected person’s blood and can cause anaemia that makes us tired and weak.
- Anti-malaria pills prevent or reduce malaria and anaemia in places and at times when there is lots of malaria in a community.
Thanks for reading. Check out for the next set of messages on another priority area under the 100 Health messages for children to learn and share!
Let us know what you think in comments or email askthepaediatricians@gmail.com
Please Doctor, is it idea to treat my kids for malaria without having any symptoms of malaria and how often should i do that?
It is NOT RIGHT!!! Please only treat children when they have LABORATORY-EVIDENCE of confirmed malaria. Read more about Malaria here
You should not do it at all!!!
When your children have symptoms suggesting malaria, take them to the hospital first so the malaria can be diagnosed and confirmed properly by a laboratory test….then treatment can be given.
If you keep treating when they do not have Malaria, they will not develop immunity against Malaria and can end up having the SEVERE MALARIA type when they eventually have malaria which is not the best.
We are looking forward to having a Malaria vaccine soon which hopefully will protect against and prevent malaria. Watch out!