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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has stated that the federal government through the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare is working on different measures to ensure a significant drop in malaria prevalence and deaths in Nigeria.
It stated that the government had commenced actions on the 2025 Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) and other interventions that had been found to be effective over the years.
According to the agency, the target is to achieve less than 10 per cent parasite prevalence and less than 50 deaths per 1,000 by the end of 2025.
NMEP National Coordinator, Dr. Nnenna Ogbulafor, announced the development at the SMC review meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Health through NMEP in Abuja. She said the objective of the meeting was to discuss the lessons learnt from the 2024 round of SMC implementation, and to plan for 2025 implementation based on the lessons learnt and recommendations from the 2024 round.
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“Evidently, the SMC intervention has helped, significantly, to tackle the malaria cases, and that has resulted in reduced cases of malaria in the endemic states particularly during rainy season when the reported cases are high.
“There are also some noticeable improvements in other interventions such as testing rates, usage of recommended antimalarial, uptake of intermittent preventive treatment by pregnant women, and the use of long lasting insecticide treated nets.
“Despite these achievements, there is still a lot more to be done in tackling the scourge of malaria in Nigeria. This, perhaps, necessitate the need for all stakeholders to redouble efforts to meet our goal of eliminating malaria in the country within the shortest possible time,” she said.
NMEP SMC Focal Person, Emmanuel Shekarau, in his presentation, explained that 2025 SMC intervention would target 30 million individuals in 21 states in the Northwest, Northeast and North central, as well as part of Oyo state.
He confirmed that SMC had brought down the cases of malaria emergencies during the peak period (rainy season), expressing optimism that more success would be recorded in 2025 intervention.
