81,000 Nigerians die of malaria annually —FG

The Federal Government has stated that Nigeria contributes one quarter of the global malaria burden – about 53 million cases annually.

The Malaria Technical Director of the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) of the Federal Ministry of Health, Prof Olugbenga Mokuolu, made this known during the media parley organised by NMEP in Abuja.

He said, “According to the latest World Malaria Report, about 229 million cases of malaria still occur in our world annually, and over the past five years, there has been a relative flattening of that curve. But the interesting thing is that Nigeria contributes about 25 percent of that total global number of malaria cases. We contribute about 53 million cases of malaria annually.

The director mentioned that progress has been recorded in “malaria-related mortality from the latest. It is beginning to drop below 400,000.”

However, he added that “Nigeria still contributes about a fifth of that total number of mortality for malaria globally. In Nigeria, we estimate that 81,640 die of malaria annually. But we have been making progress overtime. Also, the burden of malaria is not uniform across the country. Also, Nigeria accounts for nineteen (19) percent of global deaths due to malaria. Malaria kills nine (9) people every hour in Nigeria.

“At the individual level, there was the challenge of failure to seek care because everybody was afraid. There was also the fear of stigma and people saw the hospital as a place where potentially you could contract covid-19. There was that hold back. There was a delay in seeking care, so people sought self-care. There were economic consequences from the lockdown.

Read also: Nigeria gets Global Fund’s $890m grant to tackle HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria

“For us in malaria, there was a threat to planned activities and the overall implications of all of these was that covid-19 threatened a reversal of the gains in malaria control. Regarding malaria prevalence, in 2010, we had a prevalence of 42 percent. In 2015, it had come down to 27 percent, and in 2018, 23 percent. We had a more dramatic fall in the area of deaths.

“However, because of covid-19, we stood the risk of a two to three fold increase in mortality if nothing was done. This was the context in which we needed to respond as a national malaria program to the covid-19 challenge.”

In his remarks, the National Coordinator of the National Malaria Elimination Program (NMEP), Dr. Audu Bala Mohammed, “We had planned to replace in the year 2020 over 31.5 million insecticide treated nets (ITNs) to cover 56.7 million people across eleven states: Adamawa, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Enugu, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kwara, Oyo, Plateau, Osun, and Zamfara. Except for States without donor support (Bayelsa, Borno, Enugu and FCT). I am glad to report that apart from Oyo all the States were covered with some having coverage of over 95 percent of those targeted. And the reason why Oyo was not covered was not basically because of COVID-19 related issues.

“Over 17 million ITNs were distributed in these six states. I am also glad to report that for Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) – a preventive measure targeting children between 3 and 59 months of age within the Sahel region – we covered all the 9 states that had been planned to reach. The 9 States targeted were: Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara.”

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