Eight hundred and fifty thousand (850,000) children are to be reached by the ongoing malaria chemotherapy in Borno State, the World Health Organisation revealed on Sunday.
The malaria chemotherapy is a seasonal exercise, and the ongoing exercise makes it the fourth in the year.
The ongoing exercise has more than 2700 volunteers across seven local government areas of Borno state.
The 4th cycle of seasonal malaria chemoprevention campaign is underway. The ongoing exercise is supported by WHO who is working in collaboration with Borno State Ministry of Health to reach more than 850 000 children aged 3 – 59 months with anti-malaria drugs in the concluding cycle of the campaign for 2018.
The campaign is aimed at reducing the burden of malaria especially among children 3-59 months who have been predisposed to mosquito bites in the crisis-torn Borno state.
Speaking to journalists during the exercise in Maiduguri, the WHO Health Emergency programmes manager, Dr. Collins Owili explained that seasonal malarial chemoprevention campaign was introduced in Borno state with a view to reducing high child morbidity and mortality rates in children under-5 years in Borno state due to malaria.
He said: “In response to high burden of malaria in north-east Nigeria, WHO initiated a seasonal malaria modelling exercise in 2017 aimed swiftly at reducing the toll of malaria by saving 10 000 lives among children under-5 years in Borno state.”
Owili said this exercise has proven to be effective and that is why we continued with another four cycles this year.
He said it is hoped that lessons learned from the campaign in north-eastern Nigeria can be applied in other emergency settings across the world.
While attesting to the effectiveness of the intervention, Borno state Malaria Programme Manager, Mala Waziri, stated that the burden of malaria in the state has evidently reduced since the exercise was modelled in 2017.
He said: “Although, we are yet to conduct an impact assessment of the seasonal malaria chemoprevention exercise in Borno state, it is evident that the intervention has helped to reduce the incidence of malaria in the household as less cases are reported in the clinics this year compared to previously.”
According to Dr. Ini Nglass, WHO focal person for malaria prevention in the north-east Nigeria, the 4th cycle is the last of the planned malaria campaign for Borno state this year. “This is the last of the planned cycles of seasonal malaria chemoprevention for the year. Our volunteers are administering anti-malaria drugs but we have to also distribute insecticide treated nets, another proven strategy for malaria prevention, next year.
SMC is a WHO-recommended intervention for children under five living in the Sahel sub-region of Africa. The use of this preventive strategy especially during the peak transmission period (rainy season) has been shown to reduce cases of severe malaria by about 75%.