More than 2,000 people in Thailand were infected with malaria in the past three months, the Public Health Ministry said yesterday.
Malaria remains a threat in the deep South, especially Yala province, where the number of malaria cases has increased from 30 a year to 3,000 annually over the past several years because of the unrest in the area, Vector-Borne Disease Bureau director Dr Wichai Satimai said.
"Medical personnel could not enter villages to provide medicine and equipment to prevent infection, because of the unrest during the past few years," he said.
He was speaking at a workshop on malaria prevention and control for high-risk groups living along Thailand's borders.
He said the number of Thais diagnosed with malaria from January to March was 2,320. But when compared with the same period last year, the figure had decreased 44 per cent.
Meanwhile, the number of foreigners infected with malaria in Thailand this year was 3,220, a 19-per-cent decrease from the same period last year.
Last year, about 24,816 people were infected with malaria. Of this number, about 15,181 cases were people living along the Thailand-Burma border.
Dr Charles Delacollette, manager of the World Health Organisation's mekong Malaria Programme, said he was worried about the spread of infection along the Thai-Burmese border, as the number of malaria cases in Burma had increased to more than 400,000 in 2009.
"If there is no collaboration between Thailand and Burma, they are going to fail in disease prevention," he said.
However, there is a declining interest among government and donors in malaria control and prevention.
Wichai said reductions to public health staff nationwide due to reorganisation of the health system and poor community participation and involvement had led to inadequate public awareness of the malaria problem.
Inflexibility in the malaria-surveillance system, which is unable to respond to changing situations, is another obstacle to controlling the disease, he said.
