no fewer than 3o children die every hour in Nigeria as a result of malaria attack.
Cordinator of the ational Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) in the Federal Ministry of Health, Audu Muhammed who made the shocking disclosure in Abuja added that malaria also render a substantial number of children incapable of effective learning.
He said the scourge remained a major contributor to the country’s high infant mortality rate.
According to UNICEF, every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds and 145 women of childbearing age, thereby making the country the second largest contributor to the under-five and maternal mortality rate in the world.
Audu who spoke at a media parley where he was represented by the Director, Monetary and Evaluation, NMEP, Dr. Perpetual Uhomoibhi, disclosed that the Federal Government has scaled up the distribution of long lasting insecticides nets (LLINs) across the country in an attempt to stop children from being infected with the disease.
He, however, said Nigeria has recorded a reduction in the prevalence rate of malaria
“It is indeed sad to know that malaria is still a leading cause of death for under-five children in Nigeria, snuffing out lives of about 30 children every one hour and rendering a substantial number of them incapable of effective learning. However, we have good results on reduction of prevalence,” he said.
On how the reduction was achieved, he explained that Federal Government has distributed 8.4 million LLINs in Kogi, Edo and Osun States, with a total of 105 million distributed across the country.
“The prevalence of malaria has reduced from 42 percent to 27 percent (MIS, 2015). The National Insecticide Resistance Management (NIRM) plan has been finalised, it is meant to guide the country’s decision on malaria management in the future,” he said.
Also speaking, representative of Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Omawumi Omoniwa, advised that people get tested for the disease before treatment.
It was also revealed that preventable or treatable infectious diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles and HIV/AIDS account for more than 70 per cent of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria.
|Sun