Gudie Leisure Farm Opens a Laboratory for Malaria control Research

4 July 2023, 10:34 am

Byamukama Alozious, Byamukamaalozious1993@gmail.com

In efforts to control mosquito and malaria burden, Gudie Leisure Farm under its program of Gudie Health Plan has opened up a Laboratory to conduct more research on malarial control and prevention 

Prof. Basaza Robert who heads the Health plan says already have been in research to prevent Malaria and have managed to come up with organic mosquito repellants. He adds that the product awaits licensing and has gone all necessary testing for 7 years.

“In the some Laboratory, we get mosquitoes from our Laboratory which have no malaria, we test them on a human being who has smeared with our repellant chemical to find how long it takes for the mosquito to bite and we found it’s after 7 hours. After we kill those mosquitoes not to go out of the lab and bite the people’’ Prof, Basaza said

While interacting with Journalists at Gudie Leisure Farms in Najjera , Prof. Basaza said the laboratory will not only  help  in making mosquito repellants but also will  further  support innovation research to calm malaria burden in Uganda

While Opening the Lab , The kira Major Julius Mutebi Nsubuga who officiated  expressed  his happiness to the initiative saying it has come in time to save the population from the burden.’’Gudie has done wonders in agricultural, bird keeping among others and now we have launched a lab. And this is a first time a kind of Laboratory in Uganda dealing in organics to control malaria’’ In the some way, Dr. Otieno Emmanuel said the LAB is under Gudie Health Plan which is in place to provide essential heath care to Uganda alongside the public health program of the Government.  He added that the plan intends to establish a paradigm shift of well-being of the bottom 20% of the pyramid of the community who cannot afford quality healthcare 

According to surveillance data from Ministry of Health and over, 150,000 cases were confirmed for malaria and in ever y 100 people, 40 test positive for malaria, 19 deaths due to malaria were reported at Health facilities

Meanwhile  Uganda contributes 55% of global malaria cases and is in 3 position in Africa after Nigeria and DRC and about 13 people die daily of malaria the majority being children under  5 years, while pregnant women, children between 0-19 still bear a risk