WHO: Malaria Cases Will Continue To Rise In Nigeria
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), malaria cases will continue to increase in Nigeria because the government is poorly funding the fight against the scourge.
As he spoke yesterday in Yola, Adamawa State, during a Media Engagement on Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) campaign that was organised by WHO, Dr. IniAbasi Nglass, the National Consultant on Malaria Emergencies in Nigeria, stated that 90 per cent of the schemes that were created to fight the epidemic in the country were sponsored by donor agencies.
“The Nigeria government is not properly funding the fight against malaria. Why malaria cases are low in other countries is that their budgets are sufficient to fight the scourge called malaria. Donor agencies have their limits; they cannot do everything for a country. Other countries too need their assistance.”
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He pointed out the SMC as a four months intervention scheme for children less than three years of age.
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He expressed that the main objective of the media engagement on SMC campaign was to make sure that not only do the media practitioners understand what the SMC was and its benefits, but are also able to report the campaign correctly in Adamawa.
Mrs. Lydia Adamu, one of the campaigners, blamed the difficulties of malaria treatment on self-medication, “It is not all fever that is a symptom of malaria. If you treat malaria in the case of another ailment, when you eventually have malaria, the treatment will be difficult, because your body system had developed resistance to malaria drugs.”
Mrs. Adamu cautioned against the personal diagnosis of malaria and urged for people to always go to a doctor or a clinic for testing before treatment to avoid compounding their health problems.
