Bricache

Edo State, Advocacy Core Group. The 2021 World Malaria Day is commemorated annually on April 25th with this year’s theme being “Reaching the Zero Target”. This theme aims to celebrate countries that are reaching or approaching malaria eradication. A look at the Nigeria and Edo State being an endemic community for malaria, there appears to be a far cry from reaching the Zero mark. We must recognize the progress in efforts that has been made so far especially in awareness creation, despite that it has been affected by COVID-19 also like other diseases, there is no commensurate behavioral change that would help to eradicate malaria from our community. Malaria still account for the highest percentage of hospital visitation, loss of man hours in workplace, under five illnesses, illness during pregnancy etc. In terms of over the counter purchase ýof drugs, anti-malaria misuse may only be second to analgesic.   There is the urgent need for sustained attention to be paid to the variou...

This year 2021, the world is aiming at celebrating countries that are reaching or approaching malaria eradication. Looking at the malaria response, one would be tempted to ask where Nigeria is in all these. Are we part of those reaching or approaching the point of eradication? The factual response is No! There have concerted efforts on awareness creation which have not transformed to behavioural change based on what we see in our environment.  Although preventable and curable, Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through infected mosquito bites. Before COVID-19 surfaced, globally about 3.3 billion people in 106 countries are at risk of malaria. In 2012, malaria caused an estimated 627,000 deaths, mostly among African children. The World Health Organization estimates there were 229 million cases worldwide in 2019 and 409,000 deaths. With most attention shifted to COVID-19 in the past couple of months, the attention given to malaria...