Malaria Prevalence Drops In Nigeria

The federal government says malaria prevalence has reduced tremendously in Nigeria.

But National Coordinator of the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), Dr Audu Bala Mohammed, said malaria was still a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Nigeria.

In a chat with journalists, Mohammed said the success was due to the ban placed on the use of monotherapeutic drugs like Chloroquine to treat malaria.

“We did an extensive research and discovered that the monotherapeutic drugs have lost effect on malaria,” he said.

“We replaced it with Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) for the treatment of malaria.

“Periodic review of the result had justified the effectiveness of ACT in the fight against malaria.”

Mohammed, who spoke through NMEP Head of Advocacy Communication, Chukwu Okoronkwo, confirmed that ‘few pockets’ of cases of malaria recorded in recent are mostly from the rural communities due to some peculiar challenges.

He was, however, delighted that some people quickly go for malaria treatment once they discover symptoms of malaria without any form of diagnosis to ascertain the true cause of the symptoms.