By Olamide Francis
The National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has revealed that Nigeria records 53million cases of malaria every year, Nature News gathered.
Prof Olugbenga Mokuolu, NMEP Malaria Technical Director of the Federal Ministry of Health, who made this disclosure at a media parley in Abuja, noted that Nigeria currently accounts for 25 percent of global deaths due to malaria.
In his presentation titled: ‘Delivering Malaria Intervention in the context of COVID-19: How NMEP has fared” Professor Mokuola said, it was unfortunate that the outbreak of covid-19 pandemic disrupted malaria programs in Nigeria especially during the lockdown across the states.
While stressing that most Nigerians resorted to self-medication for fear of contracting the disease, he added that some persons were seeking medical care in the wrong places. He further disclosed that progress has been made in the last one year in reducing the prevalence of malaria in the country from 42 percent in 2010, to 23 percent in 2018, with a dramatic fall in the mortality rate.
“We are grateful to God that there is a reduction in malaria-related mortality, from the latest report. It is beginning to drop below 400,000. However, Nigeria still contributes about a fifth of that total number of mortality for malaria globally. In Nigeria, we estimate that 81,640 die of malaria annually.
“At the individual level, there was the challenge of failure to seek care because everybody was afraid. There was also the fear of stigma and people saw the hospital as a place where potentially you could contract covid-19. There was that holdback. There was a delay in seeking care, so people sought self-care. There were economic consequences from the lockdown.
“The agency has also changed strategy from using distribution points to the house -to – house method for distribution of 17,398,201 Long Lasting Mosquito Treated Nets, LLMNs in six states namely Adamawa, Benue, Zamfara, Kwara, Ogun and Plateau State,” he said.
He added that NMEP has secured $200 million from the World Bank to support malaria prevention in six states, a cut cutting intervention in 13 states with an additional $100 million secured from the Islamic Development Bank to support malaria fight in five states within the period of 2021 to 2023.
Earlier, NMEP National Coordinator, Dr. Audu Bala Mohammed, said plans were underway to distribute at least 31.5 million insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to cover 56.7 million people across eleven states.
He listed the states to include; Adamawa, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Enugu, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kwara, Oyo, Plateau, Osun, and Zamfara. He added that NMEP has reached at least 13 million under-five children with the seasonal Chemoprevention intervention in 9 states.
“I am also glad to report that for Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention, SMC, a preventive measure targeting children between 3 and 59 months of age in 9 states that had been planned to reach,” Mohammed added.