The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, has promised to focus on the lessons learnt from the just-concluded Support to National Malaria Programme Phase Two, (SuNMaP 2), to eliminate malaria in the country.
Dr Ehanire, stated this at the SuNMaP 2 dissemination meeting, on Tuesday in Abuja, and announced that Nigeria will soon be declared malaria-free, like China.
Dr Ehanire also noted that the country’s Malaria Elimination Project was solely donor-driven and would henceforth put a mechanism in place to mobilise revenue inwardly.
He urged the private sector and philanthropists to assist the government in providing funds for the elimination of malaria from the country.
The National Team Lead of SuNMaP 2, Dr Lola Mabogunje, in her presentation titled “Partnership with Government in Achieving Sustainable Malaria Programming”, said that the project, which was supposed to last for five years, had to be truncated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mabogunje said that each of the years of the project was to focus on transition, capacity building, transition, monitoring and sustainability.
She noted that the whole essence of the project was to increase domestic funding for malaria in Nigeria.
The Director of the National Malaria Elimination Programme, FMOH, Dr Olufunmilayo Adeniyi, who delivered a paper on “Malaria Programming in Nigeria: Journey towards Sustainable Programming”, noted that 27 per cent of global malaria cases, 23 per cent of malaria deaths and 57 million clinical cases of malaria were in Nigeria.
She said that malaria had remained a public health issue and that Nigeria had put interventions in place to eliminate the disease.
The interventions include insecticide-treated nets mass campaigns across the nation where all households should sleep under insecticide-treated nets, to prevent malaria in adults, pregnant women and children.
Also, pregnant women are expected to visit antenatal care during pregnancy whereby they can take the IPTP, which is malaria treatment for pregnant women to protect women and the unborn babies from malaria.
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