World Malaria Day and zero burden status in Nigeria

Recently, the world observed the celebration of World Malaria Day – April 25. Every year, this date is usually set aside to re-examine global efforts towards combating this dreadful disease that continues to claim many lives worldwide.

This year’s malaria day seems to portray an attained reasonable milestone as far as winning the war against the disease is concerned in Nigeria. Despite the harshness of the Covid-19 outbreak, Nigeria’s record in keeping down malaria incidences and deaths has been encouraging.

With the heavy blow dealt to the world by several variants of the Covid-19 virus throughout the year 2020 and a significant part of 2021, global efforts towards controlling the trend in malaria cases did not recede; instead, joint efforts were forged and frontline health workers made themselves available to challenge both Covid-19 and malaria on a simultaneous basis.

This programme helped upgrade Nigeria’s healthcare system, in general, to fight against this common health threat, as families and communities were afforded the opportunity to live a more healthy and prosperous life

Nigeria’s own efforts towards ensuring that malaria incidences and deaths are brought to nought have necessitated the need for a collaborative effort with international concerns.

With an alliance with Washington on the platform of the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), Nigeria has enjoyed a joint effort toward cracking down on malaria in the country. Since 2011, Nigeria’s alliance with the PMI has helped contribute about $768 million towards the health goal. Also, $78 million worth of financial contribution towards scaling down malaria outbreaks was enjoyed in 2021.

The PMI-Nigeria force also helped to secure enough funding that birthed the provision of healthcare interventions, making it possible to provide up to 58 million bed nets, 130 million medications, and 82 million malaria test kits distributed to clinics and communities since 2011, when the programme kicked off.

Also, up to 28 million preventive treatment doses were made available to pregnant women, and 13 million doses were distributed in favour of young children during the rainy season to prevent malaria.

Under the joint programme, over 3,666 healthcare workers were trained to develop the capacity to detect and treat malaria. With these, core healthcare workers were endowed with the requisite skills to help combat Covid-19 and other possible risky health outcomes in the country.

This programme helped upgrade Nigeria’s healthcare system, in general, to fight against this common health threat, as families and communities were afforded the opportunity to live a more healthy and prosperous life.

Besides this recent effort, the Nigerian government has made a significant contribution to decimating the malaria disease’s impact in the country.

In 2021, for instance, the government launched the implementation of the Global Fund 2021-2023 malaria grant, which was geared towards the support of eliminating the disease and building a resilient, sustainable system for health across the country. The in-house intervention grant aimed to reduce the malaria burden in the country and strengthen the healthcare system in general.

Read also: The high prevalence of malaria

The launch was a follow up to the presidential launch of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) in Nigeria.

With these efforts, records have shown that malaria spread and deaths have been significantly reduced and thus subdued. However, some indications prove that much is still needed to reach a zero burden status in the country. While the World Health Organisation (WHO) boasts of a significantly large reduction in malaria-related deaths during the pre-Covid-19 era, there are undoubted more gaps to be filled as far as eradicating malaria in Nigeria is concerned.

Other factors that encourage healthy breeding of mosquitoes and proper treatment of infected individuals who live in vulnerable areas across the country must still be addressed. For instance, efforts toward securing a clean and disease-free environment must be prioritised.

Also, proper funding of primary healthcare centres in rural and densely populated shanties in urban centres must be magnified. These will provide vulnerable and other lower-class citizens with the opportunity to access decent healthcare whenever they require the necessary attention against this common but preventable disease.

Ultimately, however, we enjoin officials at various levels of government – local, state and federal – to develop capacities that will be largely independent of external dynamics in the fight against this scourge.

The stock wisdom is that, a man must build his house himself. It is also necessary to point out here that a Nation’s wealth is partly stored and reflected in the health of its citizens as amply demonstrated in the aphorism, which contends that: Health is Wealth.

Therefore, we as a country should give our all to ensure that the goal of zero status is attained in the eradication of malaria. This indeed is our realistic and laudable expectation as we celebrate World Malaria Day, come the year 2023.