Dr. Perpetua Uhomoibhi, National Coordinator of the National Malaria Elimination Programme has announced that children between the ages of 3 months and 4 years would be given malaria chemoprevention drugs.
She said the Programme would be focusing on about twenty-seven million children across twenty-one states of the nation. She had commented on how malaria is still a menace in the health sector of Nigeria and how Nigeria has twenty-seven percent of malaria cases in the world.
She also added that the North East and North West had the highest number of malaria cases in the country. Despite agreeing on the decrease in the cases from twenty-seven percent in 2015 to twenty-five percent, she still was displeased by the numbers in the north and asked for more work to be done in those areas to eliminate the parasite.
“We are glad to inform you that this year, the NMEP is not relenting as plans to further scale up to all the 21 states have been secured and an estimated 27 million children are eligible for the SMC in 2022 in Nigeria,” Uhomoibhi said.
She also added that the strategy employed will reduce the effects of malaria on children which would in turn prevent the infection and lessen the number of children that die from severe malaria. The number of states that have implemented the malaria elimination program has increased from nine to twenty-one.
