Kenya’s new kid steals show in Spanish race

Reigning 3,000metres SC world junior champion, Conseslus Kipruto and Ethiopia’s Gelete Burka stole limelight with victories at the 70th Cross International Juan Muguerza in Elgoibar on Sunday.

Competing under tough weather, the winners’ task included braving heavy rainfall during the second half of the men’s race on ground that had absorbed relentless rain the previous night.

The men’s 10.8km tussle had been billed as a thrilling encounter among four top Kenyans in the guise of the three-time winner Leonard Komon, last year’s 10,000m world leader Emmanuel Bett, 2011 World cross-country bronze medalist Vincent Chepkok and Conseslus Kipruto.

Kipruto was an impressive winner of the IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona last year with a championship record of 8:06.10 in the 3,000m SC.

With fears of the course being muddy, the race didn’t begin particularly fast with Italy’s Andrea Sanguinetti and Spain’s 2008 World indoor 1500m bronze medalist Juan Carlos Higuero setting the early pace.

At the third kilometer covered in 9:15, eight men still remained in the leading group, among them four Kenyans, led by the current 10 miles World record holder Leonard Komon and another group commanded by four Spaniards, who included former European cross-country silver medalist Ayad Lamdassem, Higuero, European Cross eighth-place finisher Javier Guerra and Iván Fernández.

Afterwards, Kipruto took command of the pace for the first time but he was soon relegated to second position as the 2008 World Cross silver medalist Komon regained the leadership.

As a result of his relentless pace, Guerra and Higuero lost ground and the slim chance of victory halfway while Lamdassem struggled at the back of the pack.

The penultimate 2100m loop didn’t produce any major changes as Kipruto and Komon took turns at the front with Bett and Chepkok positioning themselves just behind them with ferocious rain beginning to fall.

By the bell Komon, Bett and Kipruto ran in a single file to build a 30-metre margin on Chepkok and Lamdassem.

Kipruto, 18-years old, regained the lead with 1200m remaining and opened up a sizeable gap on Bett within the space of 200m while Komon was alone in third.

Conditions became more grueling as the downpour intensified and a spot of drama took place when the eventual winner Kipruto fell into the mud just 400m from the finish line.     

Early in the morning, not long after the sun rises above the Zambian plains, they map out their plan of attack. A detailed strategy is needed. After all, they are on the trail of a killer.

Dressed in orange t-shirts, riding on bicycles, motorcycles, in cars, trucks and occasionally in ox carts, they fan out across their target or ‘catchment’ areas. They travel along paved roads, dirt tracks, through fields and villages, and eventually go door-to-door on the hunt for Plasmodium falciparum – the mosquito-borne parasite that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children under five. A child dies from malaria every 30 seconds, according to the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF.

"What's the alternative?" to elimination, asks Duncan Earle, director of MACEPA. "There are those who think we can tread water, but it's an unending investment, because if you don't eliminate it then you have to continue preventing, controlling and treating. So we have to go for it. We have done it in 111 countries around the world, why not another 90?"

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in December said in its World Malaria Report 2012 that a "concerted effort by endemic countries, donors and global malaria partners" had led to strengthened malaria control around the world.

While this strategy now includes testing and treatment in certain areas as transmission drops, its primary tools have been the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying of insecticide. As a result of all these efforts, malaria transmission rates have dropped to near zero in some parts of Zambia. Large-scale distribution of free bed nets has had a particularly significant impact.

"The campaign for the past five to eight years has been trying to get bed nets out and get a high level of usage of those bed nets to understand what that single intervention could do in terms of a key health outcome, which is childhood deaths", explains MACEPA's veteran malariologist Carlos (Kent) Campbell. "To our tremendous amazement, the impact has been even greater than we could have imagined."

Campbell says there was a 29% reduction in all childhood deaths within the first two years. "To put that in perspective: there's nothing matching that, which is reflective of how much death malaria caused in Zambia and how powerful bed nets are to decrease transmission.”

Since 2000, childhood deaths from malaria have dropped by 20% in other African nations using the SUFI approach, according to MACEPA. An estimated 300,000 children were saved from dying from malaria in 2010 alone, it said.

The latest step in Zambia's programme includes the Test and Treat campaign that began in December 2011 in certain districts of the country. Malaria trackers visit communities in those districts three times a year to conduct malaria tests, collect information, administer medication and deliver bed nets.

But the trackers are up against major challenges, including transportation. "Some of these areas are pretty rural, and even if you try to look for vehicles locally it is very difficult", says Kafula Silumbe, monitoring and evaluation officer with MACEPA/PATH in Zambia. "You find they have ox carts and things like that, and even when you get a vehicle sometimes it is not a vehicle that can go to some of these terrains...and you either have to walk or use a bicycle."

And once the malaria trackers do reach a community, finding the people they need to test or treat for the infection can be difficult as well.

"This is an area that has polygamous marriages, and household size can be anything from three people to 35 people", says Silumbe. "So you get to the household, you have to test each and every one of them. You may find that a quarter of them are positive for malaria. So you have to make sure that you just treat everyone."

But, he says, sometimes many of the people aren't home. The children could be at school and the parents might be out in the fields. In that case, the malaria trackers will have to return at a different time when more people are likely to be home.