By Vibhuti AgarwalAFP/Getty ImagesThe WHO has disputed the findings of a study on malaria that put the number of Indians dying from the mosquito-borne disease each year 13 times higher than estimated by the UN health agency.
The World Health Organization has disputed the findings of a study on malaria published in Lancet Thursday. The study put the number of Indians dying from the mosquito-borne disease each year 13 times higher than the United Nations health agency’s estimate.
Research published in the prestigious British medical journal said that malaria causes 200,000 deaths in India every year. The Lancet study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.
The World Health Organization estimates that 15,000 malarial deaths take place each year in India and 100,000 deaths worldwide.
Lancet’s research was conducted by trained field workers through interviewing family members or friends of people who had died about symptoms and if they had received any treatment for their illness before dying. This method is called verbal autopsy. Lancet said researchers from outside Indian were sent to 6,671 districts of the country to examine 122,000 premature deaths between the years 2001 and 2003.
The WHO on Thursday, however, expressed serious doubts about the number of malaria deaths identified by the Lancet research team.
“The new study uses verbal autopsy method which is suitable only for diseases with distinctive symptoms and not for malaria,” WHO’s India representative Nata Menabde said in an email statement Thursday.
The WHO says it takes into account only confirmed cases of malaria and surveys those using healthcare facilities.
Malaria symptoms include fever, flu-like illness and muscle aches. Malaria is endemic to parts of India, where many people live in mosquito-infested areas. Confirming the presence of malaria requires tests like the “Peripheral Smear for Malarial Parasite” and “Rapid Malaria Antigen”.
Lancet said the determinations made by its field researchers were reviewed by two of 130 trained doctors for all the 6,671 districts who determined whether or not the person had died from malaria.
The data concluded that 205,000 deaths before the age of 70, mainly in rural areas, were caused by malaria each year – 55,000 in early childhood, 30,000 among children ages five to 14 and 120,000 people 15 and older.
The WHO called for further review of the study.
“Malaria has symptoms common with many other diseases and cannot be correctly identified by the local population,” Dr. Menabde said, adding: “The findings of the study cannot be accepted without further validation.”