From Nahum Sule, Jalingo
Members of the Civil Society in Malaria Control , Immunization and Nutrition (ACOMIN), are advocating on government at all levels to as a matter of urgency step up the fight against malaria. According to them is a preventable and treatable disease and it continue to claim hundreds of thousands of lives each year in Nigeria , increased funding, they believed would go a long way to reduce or eliminate the spread of the disease.
The group Make the call in Jalingo, Taraba state at a Press briefing. The group programme officer, Wubunna Ishaku Gofwen, also call on media practitioners across the country to join Nigeria’s fight against the ailment by amplifying the need for increased funding for malaria intervention by the various governments.
According to them, it’s sad that the disease has continue to be on the increase, all hands , as suggested by him , should be on deck in order to eradicate the disease from the nooks and crannies of the country.
Citing the way and manner other ailments, have being giving the much desired attentions, the fight against malaria, as opined by him , should as well be given the same level of intervention in order to avert avoidable deaths.
The leadership of the Global Fund asserts that Nigeria has the “biggest malaria burden globally with about 61 million estimated cases recorded annually ” with all hands on deck, the dreams of eliminating malaria from the country, he believed would soon be a thing of the past.
Revealing the measures so far put in place by the Global Fund (GF) to help fight malaria in thirteen out of the thirty-six states in Nigeria (Taraba inclusive), the need for the government to reciprocate such gestures, he believed can no longer be overemphasized.
Gofwen, who disclosed that a whopping sum of $2.6 billion have been set aside for malaria intervention by SF in the country, listed Kaduna ,Kano Katsina, Jigawa, Kwara, Niger, Gombe, Yobe, Adamawa, Ogun, Oshun, Delta and Taraba states as the states that have been earmarked to benefit from the intervention fund.
Also on his parts, the state coordinator of the group , Alhaji Mohammed Tanko Danburam, beckoned at journalists to expand same energies they used in reporting covid-19 pandemic and Ebola to issues that have to do with malaria.
The coordinator who stressed on the need to modify the goal of the national malaria program to achieve a parasite prevalence of less than 10% and reduce mortality attributed to malaria to less than 50 deaths per 1000 live births by 2015.
