Chinese and Senegalese health experts and officials gathered here on Monday to discuss the prevention of malaria, the selection of anti-malaria drugs as well as the financing of and cooperation in the fight against the disease. At the opening ceremony of the three-day seminar, Zhou Zhaoming, the commercial counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Dakar said this event, sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, was a concrete action taken by China to carry out its promise to help Africans fight malaria.

The seminar took place just two weeks after the Beijing summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, during which Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a series of measures to assist Africa in combating malaria, he said.

Abdoulaye Ly, advisor of the Senegalese Health Ministry, attended the opening ceremony on behalf of the health minister. He said that China had accumulated enormous experience and made remarkable progress in its efforts to control the malaria epidemic.

Ly said the seminar offered a vital opportunity for China and Senegal to draw up strategies in their anti-malaria cooperation and share experiences in preventing and curing the disease.

China has been leading in the field of developing artemisinin-based anti-malaria medicines, which have been proved very effective in curing the disease. According to Chinese experts participating in the seminar, the number of people infected with malaria in China currently stood at 35,000, compared to the more than 60 million recorded in 1949.

Malaria, an infectious disease characterized by cycles of chills, fever, and sweating, is caused by the parasitic infection of red blood cells by a protozoan of the genus Plasmodium, which is transmitted by the bite of an infected female anopheles mosquito.

Though it is largely preventable, the disease kills some 3,000 children a day worldwide and claims nearly a million lives in Africa every year, according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 90 percent of the world's malaria cases occur in Africa.

Source: Xinhua