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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare through the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has commenced preparation for the 2025 malaria season, targeting 30 million individuals particularly children in 21 states in the North West, North East, North Central and part of Oyo state.
National Coordinator, NMEP, Dr. Nnenna Ogbulafor, told journalists at a meeting of key stakeholders on review of 2024 Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) in Abuja, yesterday, that significant progress has been recorded since the SMC programme commenced some years ago with focus on the endemic states.
She explained that SMC was introduced in response to the high cases of malaria during the rainy season after it was confirmed that a high number of children come down with malaria during the rainy season in the endemic states.
She said the objective of the meeting was to critically 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.
“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 the rainy season when the reported cases are high.
“There are also some noticeable improvements in other interventions such as testing rates, use of recommended antimalarials, uptake of intermittent preventive treatment by pregnant women, and the use of nets.
“Despite these achievements, there is still a lot more to be done in tackling the scourge of malaria in Nigeria; this, perhaps, necessitates the need for all stakeholders to redouble efforts to meet our goal of eliminating malaria in the country within the shortest possible time.
“This has been made possible by the commitment and support of our donors especially the Global Fund, Malaria Consortium through its philanthropic funding and the US Presidential Malaria Initiative (PMI). We, equally, appreciate the immense support and cooperation rendered to implementing partners, the state ministries of health and its agencies.”
She reminded participants of the interest of the Coordinating Minister of Health, Prof. Muhammad Pate, to the cause of reducing morbidity and mortality of malaria particularly among children, and challenged them to make valuable contributions to redefining the next round including identifying areas of inefficiencies.
NMEP SMC Focal Person, Emmanuel Shekarau, in a data presentation confirmed that SMC has brought down the cases of malaria emergencies during the peak period (rainy season).
He explained that the annual review meeting was an opportunity to critically evaluate the performance of previous years, taking up necessary lessons, and making necessary amendments for an improved result.
“We have done this SMC for several years in endemic states, and we could see the positive results in the benefitting states. But there’s room for improvement, and that’s
what we want to achieve in the coming intervention.
“During the SMC intervention which takes place across the 21 endemic states, eligible individuals particularly children are administered some anti-malaria preventive drugs which include sulfadoxine, amodaquine, among few others. These drugs are used for preventive interventions and not for treatments.”
