By Hussaina Sufyan Ahmad
MEP Advocacy Communication and Social Mobilisation (ACSM) Officer, Eunice Subair, disclose that 90,000 malaria deaths are recorded yearly in Nigeria at the quarterly meeting of the Civil Society in Malaria Control, Immunisation and Nutrition (ACOMIN), held in Abuja on October 3, 2021.
Subair noted that progress is being made to control malaria, with prevalence going down from 42% in 2010 to 27% in 2015, and 23% in 2018 (MIS 2010 and NDHS 2018).
She said malaria was still a significant burden in Nigeria, and that the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC), was ongoing in all the eligible states.
She also requested the media to help in achieving the malaria elimination goal by making the disease a topmost topic of discourse to the public by including malaria issues in their programmes. And educating the public on the importance of sleeping inside ITNs every night to protect themselves against mosquito bites, among others.
Subair stressed the need for pregnant women to visit clinics at the earliest stage of pregnancy, to undergo antenatal care and admonished Nigerians to always go to the hospital whenever they suspect their systems to have malaria symptoms.
The Coordinator of the Civil Society in Malaria Control, Immunisation and Nutrition (ACOMIN), Ayo Ipinmoye, said more than three billion people, about half of the world’s population, are at risk of malaria, which is treatable and preventable.
He noted that the recently upgraded customised management information system would save the Federal Government about N293,700,000 in logistics cost, out of the N890m budgeted for the implementation of the malaria Intervention programme.
He further explained that the deployment of technology in data collection would help check malaria commodities, such as the ACT and insecticide-treated net.
He said with the latest upgrade of ACOMIS, data could be collected from the field on a real-time basis across all implementing states.
