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Japan offers aid to Myanmar to fight malaria

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-18 14:02

YANGON -- The Japanese government has provided $3.1 million more assistance to Myanmar in fighting malaria under its grassroot grant assistance scheme, the local Biweekly Eleven reported Thursday.

Medicines for effective treatment, medical care and prevention against the disease as well as mosquito nets will be distributed to malaria-sensitive divisions and state of Bago, Magway and  Rakhine under the Japanese grant aid agreed upon recently, it said

In February 2007, the Japanese government had extended similar grant aid of $178,822 dollars to Myanmar to help fight malaria in the country's Bago division covering the region's eastern and western parts, according to earlier official report.

Malaria is among the three diseases of national concern which Myanmar has been encountering. The other two are  HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB).

Myanmar treats the three diseases as priority with the main objectives of reducing the morbidity and mortality in a bid to become no longer a public problem and meet the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations.

In its prevention efforts against malaria, the Myanmar government has distributed 50,000 long lasting insecticidal nets annually since 2000 to hardly accessible areas of national races with up to 400,000 existing bed nets also impregnated with insecticide annually since then.