Does eating boiled maize cause malaria?
A mosquito. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Instead of stopping eating maize to prevent malaria, all people should get involved in good malaria control methods.
Dr, back in the village, children are not allowed to eat boiled maize during the maize season lest they keep suffering from malaria! Is this the advice good or bad? E.J
Dear E.J,
Malaria is transmitted by female anopheles’ mosquitoes which bite a normal person after having bitten a person suffering from malaria.
Mosquitoes breed in stagnant water, in pools and increasingly in urban centres today, plastic bottles that are not properly disposed of.
The malaria transmission therefore happens more during or soon after the rainy season when rain creates stagnant water.
Adults with low immunity, the pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable to malaria attacks which happen during or towards the end of the rainy season coinciding with the maize harvests. It is therefore not true that malaria attacks children because of eating fresh boiled maize, which is nutritious.
Instead of stopping eating maize to prevent malaria, all people should get involved in good malaria control methods which include draining stagnant water pools, proper disposal of plastic water bottles and sleeping under insecticide treated mosquito nets.
The advice that children should avoid eating boiled maize to prevent them from suffering from malaria attacks has no scientific basis requiring that children eat maize to help balance their diets to improve their overall health especially at this time when they are growing.
