Delta Tackles Malaria, Distributes 3.7m Mosquito Nets
Omon-Julius Onabu in Asaba
In its continuing war against malaria, the Delta State Government is set to begin the process of distributing more than 3.7 million insecticide-treated nets to households across the 25 local government areas of the state, beginning from tomorrow (Thursday).
The state government is carrying out the programme in collaboration with the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), and Management Sciences For Health (MSH) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) with funding support from the Global Fund Malaria Project.
“This signals the commencement of the 2022 Insecticides Treated Nets (ITNs) mass campaign in the state in earnest.
“Orientation exercise for the programme, which was launched recently in Asaba, the Delta State capital, was attended by practitioners from public and private media organisations and was largely interactive with questions asked to clear grey areas regarding the exercise.
Speaking during an orientation session, especially for media practitioners, the Permanent Secretary, Delta State Primary Health Care Development Agency (DSPHCDA), Dr. Jude Winful-Orieke, said the the ITN mass campaign was to ensure that for every two persons in Delta, there was one bed net to sleep inside.
Winful-Orieke said that over 3.7 million ITNs would be distributed to households across the 25 local government areas of the state via a door-to-door method, noting that registration and simultaneous distribution of the nets would commence on June 2 through June 13, 2022.
The Director, Social Mobilisation, DSPHCDA, Dr. Ngozi Orofuke Ugbome, advised Deltans and other residents of the state to ensure that someone was at their respective residences during when those distributing the nets cover their neighborhood.
In their presentations, Jessie Okoro and Farooq Lawal of Management Sciences for Health (MSH) said that it was expected that every community would get to know about the campaign and the benefits of consistently and correctly sleeping inside the net, adding that every household should receive at least one ITN during the campaign.
The resource persons emphasised that media support was crucial to the process especially as malaria remains a leading public health challenge, apparently because it has generally been under-reported in the media.
They said that it has become imperative that malaria issues should be kept in the front-burner of health news and information dissemination while efforts should be made to provide adequate publicity before, during and after the state-wide ITN intensive campaign.
