Malaria Prevalence Has Dropped Significantly In Nigeria - FG
The National Coordinator of the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), Dr Audu Bala Mohammed, insisted that malaria was still a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Nigeria.
In a chat with journalists, Mohammed said the success was due to the ban placed on the use of monotherapeutic drugs like Chloroquine to treat malaria.
“We did an extensive research and discovered that the monotherapeutic drugs have lost effect on malaria,” he said.
“We replaced it with Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of malaria.
“Periodic review of the result had justified the effectiveness of ACT in the fight against malaria.”
Mohammed, who spoke through NMEP Head of Advocacy Communication, Chukwu Okoronkwo, confirmed that ‘few pockets’ of cases of malaria recorded in recent are mostly from the rural communities due to some peculiar challenges.
He was, however, not delighted that some people quickly go for malaria treatment once they discover symptoms of malaria without any form of diagnosis to ascertain the true cause of the symptoms.
He made reference to World Health Organisation (WHO) report which indicated that, of the 57. 3 million estimated cases of malaria recorded in 2017, only about 12.4 million cases were confirmed.
He, thus, recommended diagnosis as the first step in any case of malaria symptoms, because symptoms associated with malaria which included fever, headache and body pains are also symptomatic to several other infections.
Meanwhile, Head, Malaria Case anagement Unit at NMEP, Dr. Nnenna Ogbulafor, in her presentation, encouraged individuals and families to procure a Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) kit for easy and quick malaria diagnosis.
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