Adele Sulcas and Greg Arde
A R40-million malaria-prevention drive is expected to boost ambitious tourism and development plans in one of South Africa's most remote and beautiful, but poorest areas.
The protocol for the drive, which will involve a trilateral alliance between South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique, was signed in Johannesburg on Thursday by Valli Moosa, the tourism and environmental affairs minister and the tourism and the health ministers of the other two countries.
The Lubombo region includes the St Lucia wetlands, which will become a world heritage site in December this year, and the diving, snorkelling and fishing havens of Kosi Bay and Sodwana Bay in South Africa and Ponta da Ouro in Mozambique.
The drive aims to reduce the incidence of malaria in the north-eastern Lubombo region, which nestles between southern Mozambique, Swaziland's Lubombo mountains and the Indian ocean. This will be done mainly by spraying homes with an "environmentally friendly" pesticide. The region has been hard hit by a malaria epidemic this year which has claimed 269 people.
The programme, according to the South African government, also provides for increased primary health care services and appropriate malaria treatment.
So far this year 30 000 cases of malaria have been recorded in South Africa.
Recent research has also shown that the high incidence of malaria in the Lubombo region has been one of the major and persistent causes of underdevelopment and poverty.
The disease's effect is worsened by the high incidence of HIV infection in the region.
Malaria has been shown to be one of the biggest deterrents to much-needed foreign tourism, considered to be the country's biggest growth industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that tourism currently contributes around R53 billion annually to the South African economy, and expected it to grow at around 12 percent annually to reach R211 billion by 2010.
The programme, which uses the existing Lubombo spatial development initiative (SDI) as a platform, has been developed by an inter-country team of 15 scientists and public health managers from South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique who have been working together for the past five years.
The protocol will also involve examining the most effective drugs against malaria (about 60 percent of malaria cases are resistant to the common anti-malaria treatment, choloroquine), as well as pinpointing malaria hotspots to inform tourists of malaria risks.
"If countries stand alone we don't necessarily have all the expertise," said Brian Sharp, one of the members of the three-country technical group and leader of the malaria programme at the medical research council.
"But put together, we have an enormous amount of expertise, in terms of research, cost control, experience and general health management. We see this programme as creating an environment conducive to development and to protect the investment in the area, besides the benefits to the community. Health and development need to go together to be sustainable," Sharp said.
"Historically it's an underdeveloped and poverty stricken area which has huge potential particularly in tourism and agriculture," said Didi Moyle, an aide to Moosa.
"Two things that mitigated against this always were access - there were no roads because it was a closed military zone - and the prevalence of malaria. But the whole malaria question was ignored because it was a military zone."
Moyle emphasised the significance of the cross-border protocol. "You can't fight this just in one country," she said, and added that the programme aims to go "all the way into Kruger National Park".
"It's very important for , particularly in terms of tourism, that Kruger is a malaria-free zone." Moyle said the programme could also have an enormous impact on the development of the proposed "trans-frontier" national park, linking national parks in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Moyle said the programme could become a model in Africa for a co-operative means of fighting malaria. Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote in an Economist article earlier this year that malaria kills between one and 2,5 million people a year.
He said the international community had neglected research into malaria vaccines because they don't see a lucrative market in developing countries.
The problems caused by malaria, he said, "are profound, accessible to science and utterly neglected".
Sharp said that the members of the technical group, who had been intensely involved in malaria control and prevention efforts in the region for years, were all "very excited" about the prospect of putting together "a combined and regional approach to a problem like this which really is not held back by national borders".
At the signing Moosa said that South Africa was enjoying the biggest and most prolonged tourism boom in its history.
"But malaria can have very serious negative impacts that can, quite easily, chase away the foreign and domestic tourists upon whom we are pinning our hopes for growth and jobs in this country and in the region as a whole."