A medical epidemiologist and public health expert at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust says the fight against malaria must continue even a midst the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Donnie Mategula made the call during an interaction with the media under ‘Journalist in residence’ programme.

“Covid-19 has really affected the fight against Malaria because the focus has shifted to fighting Covid-19, normally when people are sick they get a fever but because of Covid-19 people would delay to seek medical care and this affected people’s access to malaria thereby accelerating Malaria cases,” Mategula said.

He added that, over the last decade Malaria control interventions have been scaled up including, access to treatment, tests, distribution of nets and most recently piloting of the Malaria Vaccine.

Malaria is one of the most severe public health problems worldwide.