Come monsoon, evangelists and evangelized prepare to face common enemy in northeast – malaria

Guwahati, Assam – In a recent news report, it was stated that Church workers suffer from malaria along with those they minister to in northeast parts of India.

Health experts say the region's geography and ecology make it a good breeding ground for anopheles mosquitoes, which can transmit malaria.

The region, mostly hills covered by humid forest, is one of the wettest areas of the world, with annual rainfall averaging 2,500 millimeters. Many areas get waterlogged during the rainy season, which helps mosquitoes breed.

Father Paul Mattekatt of Diphu diocese in Assam state says the malaria strains in the region have become more resistant to medication. According to him, this is because most people do not take the full treatment prescribed. As a result, people have to take stronger doses to prevent themselves from catching the disease.

The priest, who is the director of the diocesan social service society, said all priests in his diocese have suffered malarial attacks. An attack had hospitalized Bishop John Thomas Kattrukudiyil of Diphu this May. His predecessor, Bishop Mathai Kochuparampil, died tragically of cerebral malaria in 1992.

Malaria is suspected to kill hundreds annually in the region, though there are no official records or statistics. A female mosquito carrying the virus transmits it when she bites to get the blood she needs to nourish her eggs, which she lays on water.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), India reported 938 malaria deaths in 2001. But unofficial calculations say that on an average about 20,000 people die due to malaria every year. If this estimate is correct, the disease kills one person every 26 minutes in India.

The country recorded 1.97 million malaria cases in 2001. However, the WHO estimate is again much higher. Its report says some 15 million people suffered from the disease that year, with 80 percent of cases occurring along the Myanmar border, where malaria is endemic.

Physicians and health workers say living in homes well–protected from mosquitoes and eating healthy food can help people avoid or resist the sickness. The most vulnerable victims are the poor.

Church workers in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, Tura district, say malaria is their "baptism" into the region.

Jesuit seminarian Nuchiso Lawrence, 28, suffered his first malaria attack within two months of his arrival there in Chidimit village. Jesuits opened their first house in the Garo Hills last September. The seminarian spent a week in intensive medical care in Kohima, the capital of neighboring Nagaland state.

Two priests aged above 60 now manage the mission, a temporary bamboo structure. Both have had two bouts of malaria already, Lawrence said. He said that when one priest had to be rushed to hospital after he collapsed while hearing confessions, "we knew it was cerebral malaria."

The village has about 5,000 poor and illiterate people. "In the last two months, I have seen more than 30 people – mostly children – die of malaria," the seminarian said, noting that no medical facilities exist there.

Missionaries working elsewhere in the region have similar stories.

In North Cachar Hills, an area under Diphu diocese, Jesuit Father Charles D'Souza had six attacks of malaria in 2000, his first year there. He had to take 24 bottles of quinine, a malaria medicine, which affected his system. "My hearing is impaired and my ears get a tingling and clogging sensation," Father D'Souza disclosed. He said the local people suffer because medical care in the area "is so bad (and hospitals) are far away."

Apostolic Carmel Sister Jyothi Maria says she had "a very severe attack" of malaria in Diphu in June 2003. Similarly, Jesuit Father Ajay Tirkey, 38, who works in Assam's Bongaigaon diocese, suffered twice in 2002. He said those living near forests on the Bhutan border are more prone than others.

Jesuit–managed Good Shepherd School in North Cachar Hills conducted a medical camp this May at Didambara and treated 380 patients in one day. The remote village has neither electricity nor public health facilities.

The government of Nagaland state has declared June as Malaria Eradication Month to popularize ways to combat the disease, such as by making it harder for mosquitoes to breed in villages.

Rocus Chasie, deputy director of the Nagaland Medical Department, announced recently that the government is making "a conscious effort" to educate people through media and medical camps. "But it will take quite an effort to eradicate" malaria, he admitted.

And with the monsoon having already made its presence felt this year in the hilly states of northeast India, it seems that evangelists and the evangelized have a battle to face – with mosquitoes.