The Ogun state government, in collaboration with Society for Family Health (SFH) is set to distribute about 3.1million mosquito nets in its bid to eliminate malaria across the 20 local government areas in the state.
Speaking during a media parley on Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITNs) universal coverage campaign held in Abeokuta, the Project Director, Global Fund for SFH, John Ocholi, said the menace has prompted the 2024 campaign for ITNs, targeting residents of rural areas where malaria risk is at the highest.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) 2022 report on malaria, Nigeria had an estimated 68 million malaria cases, leading to about 194,000 deaths due to prevalence of the disease in 2021.
Ocholi said Ogun state has the lowest proportion of net utilisation globally, saying the goal of the campaign is to ensure healthy living of people rather than spending their resources on treating the disease.
“First, we need to work on preventing the mosquitoes biting us which is what the government Ogun state is doing by partnering with the free distribution of nets in the state. The attention now is when you give people nets and they sleep inside every night they reduce the bites and the contact with the vector.
“Ogun state has one of the least percentages of nets utilisation in the world, its somewhere around 30% and net ownership is about 60-70%, so we want to also encourage people to use the net,” he said.
Responding, the malaria programme manager for Ogun state, Olamide Adeyinka, noted that the state had embarked on an interpersonal sensitisation to allay the citizen’s fear on the usage of mosquito net.