Mothers may be doing their children a lot of favour by giving them foods rich in Vitamin A, selenium and zinc because they are supplements that can protect children from having malaria, especially the severe malaria.

Common food items such as mango, potatoes, carrot, lettuce and oranges abound in the market and are rich sources of such nutrients for both children and adults.

In Africa alone, a child dies from malaria every 30 seconds and there is yet no effective vaccine against malaria that could save them from developing malaria or its severe complication.

However, experts studying the problem that is more prevalent in children and pregnant women suggest that a good diet can help prevent malaria in children at least given that a substantial proportion of malaria-related illnesses and deaths among children are related to deficiencies in diet.

According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, deficiencies in dietary iron, zinc, vitamin A and folic acid appear to increase the threat that malaria poses to child health. These vitamins and minerals are important to the human body's immune system, but are often scarce in areas where malaria is common.
The researchers estimated that zinc and vitamin A deficiencies in children under five may each be responsible for about 20 per cent of malaria deaths in that age group every year a total of nearly 400,000 deaths. Ninety per cent of the deaths due to vitamin A deficiency are in Africa, they say.

The team, led by Laura Caulfield, an associate professor at the school's Centre for Human Nutrition, reviewed data from Ghana, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, and found a strong link between malnourishment and the likelihood of malaria being fatal in children under the age of five.

Even mildly malnourished children were twice more likely to die from malaria than children who are not undernourished. For children with severe malnutrition, the risk of death from malaria was nine times greater than in those who were well nourished.

The research findings, published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene suggested that being well nourished enables children to mount a strong immune response and beat the infection.

Several scientists have also corroborated the role of eating right if the effects of malaria in children are to be curtailed. A study published in the Internet Journal of Tropical Medicine in 2006 pointed out that even when the child has malaria, its combination with iron supplements considerably improved the effectiveness of its treatment, thus making the child recover faster.

The study of the effects of vitamin A and iron supplementation was among Cameroonian 132 preschool children aged between 6 and 60 months and when the deficiency of vitamin A and iron was corrected in these children with malaria, there was a remarkably improvement in ability to recover from malaria.

Experts have traced the benefit of vitamin A to its ability to inhibit the development of Plasmodium falciparum, responsible for malaria, under laboratory conditions, they reported this in the 2004 edition of the Journal Experimental Parasitology. Vitamin A and iron supplements does not only help to reduce the deficiency caused by Plasmodium, they also facilitate the restoration of the haemoglobin level as well as the production of red blood cells, resulting in the improvement noted in children receiving iron supplementation.

Vitamin A improves the absorption of iron in the intestine, thus helping to hasten the process of blood formation required in the fight against anaemia in infants as well as in pregnant women

Though there is yet the need for further researches to optimize the use of vitamin A and other micronutrients in the treatment of malaria, the researchers however recommend to everyone living in malaria endemic region a usual consumption of food sources of these micronutrients as papaya, yellow potato, carrots, yolk and liver, considering the virtues of vitamin A and iron in the malaria prevention and treatment.

While malaria often afflicts populations that are both impoverished and malnourished, a large portion of the burden of malaria falls upon the most vulnerable within the population - children and pregnant women.

Nutrition plays a major role in maintaining health, and malnutrition appears to generate vulnerability to a wide variety of diseases and general ill health. In a case where a child is undernourished, he or she may be unable to mount an appropriate immune response to the malaria parasite due to the already lowered immunity.

Equally having a diet rich in zinc or zinc supplementation is helpful. Zinc deficiency has also been hypothesized to aggravate malaria because it is required in ensuring good immune response to infectious disease.

Studies that investigated the relationship between zinc status and malaria also showed a protective effect of zinc supplementation. In The Gambia, the 110 children who received 70 mg of zinc supplementation twice a week for 15 months had 32 per cent fewer malaria-related clinic visits than did the placebo group.

A randomized trial in Papua New Guinea involving 274 found a 38 per cent reduction in clinic visits for malaria in the group that received 10 mg of elemental zinc supplementation six days a week for 46 weeks compared with a placebo group. Current intervention strategies focus on zinc supplementation, fortification of locally acceptable foods, and dietary modification to consume greater amounts of animal products and fewer fiber and phytates

Good and nutritious meals, no doubt, are critical to protecting children against the fatalities associated with malaria and all care givers should make it a point to watch what children eat.