Malaria In Childrens Video lecture

Malaria in Children VIDEO LECTURE

Children are the worst affected, especially children aged 6 months to 5 years.There were an estimated 438 000 malaria deaths around the world in 2015, of which approximately 69% were in children under 5 years of age.Severe anemia, hypoglycemia and cerebral malaria are features of severe malaria more commonly seen in children than in adults.

WHO recommends the following package of interventions for the prevention and treatment of malaria in children:

• use of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs);
• prompt diagnosis and effective treatment of malaria infections.
• in areas of moderate-to-high transmission in sub-Saharan Africa, intermittent preventive therapy for infants (IPTi), except in areas where WHO recommends administration of seasonal malaria chemoprevention SMC;
• in areas with highly seasonal transmission of the Sahel sub-region of Africa, seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) for children aged between 3 and 59 months;

Diagnosis and treatment

children with suspected malaria should have parasitological confirmation of diagnosis before treatment begins, provided that diagnosis does not significantly delay treatment. 

 

Artemisinin derivatives are safe and well tolerated by young children, so the choice of ACT will be determined largely by the safety and tolerability of the partner drug. Many antimalarials lack paediatric formulations, necessitating the division of adult tablets, which can lead to inaccurate dosing. 

WHO recommends new adjusted dosing schemes for dihydro-artemisinin + piperaquine in children weighing less than 25 kg and for parenteral artesunate in children weighing less than 20 kg. For infants weighing less than 5 kg with uncomplicated P. falciparum, WHO recommends treatment with an ACT at the same mg/kg body weight dose as for children weighing 5 kg.