Lafia – The Nasarawa State government says it has administered malaria prevention drugs to 775, 905 children under five years across the 13 Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state in 2021.
Mr Ahmed Yahaya, Nasarawa State Commissioner for Health made the disclosure at a media parley to commence the second round of the malaria prevention drugs on Friday in Lafia.
The Commissioner said they were targeting to give the drugs to 816, 532 in the second round of the exercise for 2022.
According to the Commissioner, in an effort to further reduce the burden of malaria, the state has keyed into the seasonal malaria chemo-prevention (SMC) intervention.
He explained that the intervention was adopted because it was discovered that it has helped in reducing prevalence of malaria amongst children of less than five years in the Sahel and Savana regions of the country.
“SMC is a preventive intervention focused on children under five to maintain therapeutic antimalarial drug concentration in the blood throughout the period of greatest malaria risk,” he said.
He explained that due to the efforts by the government in collaboration with partners, the burden of malaria has continue to drop in the state.
He explained that from 60 per cent prevalence since creation of the state in 1996, it dropped to 30 per cent in 2010 and to 14.6 per cent based on survey of 2018.
The Commissioner attributed the success to support from partners and enhanced environmental and vector control activities, improved utilisation of insecticide treated beds nets (ITNs).
He listed other reasons for the reduction to include appropriate social behaviour change communication (SBCC), improved case management.
According to the Commissioner, the state government is doing everything possible to eliminate malaria completely from the state and achieve zero prevalence in the next few years.
Earlier, Dr Ibrahim Alhassan, Director Public Health in the ministry of health said the media parley was to create awareness on how to reduce the burden of malaria in the state.
(NAN/vitalnewsngr.com)
