Malaria Infection Reduces In Borno

Borno State commissioner for Health and Human Resources, Prof Baba Gana has expressed delight that the rate of malaria infection is declining in the state.

The commissioner made the revelation on Friday during the commemoration of the 2024 World Malaria Day organised by the state government in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other partners in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

According to him, persons confirmed of Malaria in 2023 in the state stood at 527,305 with 15,036 being severe cases; the figure for 2022 stood at 600,141 with 13,492 being severe cases while the figure for 2021 stood at 714,904 with 20,774 being severe cases according to the District Health Information Software (DHIS-2) routine data.

He noted that the figures showed that there has been a downward trend in cases of Malaria in the past three years in Borno State.

He said the Federal Government through the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) and the Borno State Government under the leadership of Governor Babagana Zulum, through the Ministry of Health in collaboration with partners have made tremendous impact and achieved remarkable targets in the implementation of various interventions.

“I am pleased to inform you that the state malaria elimination programme has yielded better results as recently seen in the National Malaria Indicator Survey (NMIS)-2021 findings. Mosquito net ownership by households was 70.4 percent; net use by household was 36.7 percent, use by Children under 5-years of age was 55.8 percent; net use by pregnant women was 56.6 percent; pregnant women who received Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPT) at least once was 78.7 percent; prevalence of malaria in children under 5 by RDT was 18.6 percent.

“The state has had seven rounds of uninterrupted Seasonal Malaria Chemo-prevention (SMC) intervention between 2017 and 2023 through the support of Nigeria Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), World Health Organisation (WHO) and Malaria Consortium (MC) where over 2,000,000 children aged 3 months to 5 years of age were reached every year.

In his remarks, the state coordinator, WHO, Dr Salisu Ibrahim, lauded the Borno State Government for giving priority to healthcare needs of the people and assured that WHO and other partners would continue to support the state in tackling malaria and other infectious diseases.