Stephensi also flourishes in building sites, where large open cisterns are used for cement- and brick-making, and such sites are increasingly common in rapidly urbanizing areas.
Seada Ahmed, health education and communication director at the Oromia Health Bureau, said that some urban areas in the region reported their first malaria cases ever this year.
After years of sustained investment mirroring the push against malaria elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, the Oromia region saw its cases fall from 900,000 in 2011 to about 100,000 per year in 2019. But last year the number surged to 2.8 million people, and in the last three months alone 1.4 million of 45 million people in the region were diagnosed with malaria.
Some part of that higher case figure reflects better case-finding, Ms. Ahmed said, because community health workers have been going door-to-door to try to detect new infections.
Many of those infections are severe. While just 623 people required hospitalization to treat their symptoms in 2023, more than 41,000 have been admitted to the hospital in the past three months, Ms. Ahmed said.
Ababaye Tilahun has worked for 15 years as a health worker in the West Welega Zone, where the highest case numbers have been recorded.
“We have had malaria in the past, but this year has been exceptionally worse than any other time,” Ms. Tilahun said.
