Dinasena Rathugamage –
Another malaria patient was found at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital yesterday (04), Acting Hospital Director S. Jamunanandan said.
The patient is a returnee from an African country and four malaria patients have been found in Jaffna in the last few days.
All the four malaria patients found in Jaffna were infected with Plasmodium falciparum.
The health authorities in the North said that all the patients had returned from African countries and that the last time a malaria patient was seen in Sri Lanka was in October 2012.
Since November of that year, Sri Lanka has become a malaria-free country, which was certified by the World Health Organization in 2016, but still has about 100 percent of the world’s malaria cases, accounting for about 40% of the population.
However, with the discovery of four malaria patients in Jaffna, steps have been taken to test blood samples for malaria in all suspected patients coming to hospitals in the North for treatment.
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