- Fine-tune strategies, exchange ideas with other countries at SMC meeting
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
The Federal Ministry of Health through the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) has commenced implementation of preventive strategies in response to seasonal malaria outbreak in Nigeria.
It explained that the preventive response is anticipation of rainy season during which transmission of malaria is high, particularly among children of certain age bracket.
Ministry officials involved in the case management thus participated in the 2024 annual Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) Alliance meeting held in Abuja, on Tuesday, with 12 endemic countries majorly from the African region that accounts for 94 per cent of global burden (World Malaria Report 2023), in attendance.
Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, in his remarks, described the meeting as a key step towards the reversal of the scourge of malaria which, he said, has become a public health menace that has killed significant number of children and pregnant women, among other vulnerable groups.
The Minister who was represented by Dr. Chukwuma Anyaike, Director, Public Health, Federal Ministry of Health, appreciated the result of the past meetings, particularly in the effort of the endemic countries to tackle malaria, and reiterated that the meeting serves as a guide to the malaria endemic countries in reviewing outcomes, share best practices, challenges, lessons learnt and proffer technical and funding guidance for SMC campaigns.
He said: “Evidently, SMC implementation has attained a major milestone since the World Health Organisation’s recommendation over a decade ago, and its deployment has been impactful, feasible and highly acceptable malaria preventive intervention.
“Federal Ministry of Health through NMEP has long adopted SMC as one of its drug-based malaria preventive strategy since 2014, and has truly demonstrated remarkable, unprecedented and dogged approach at implementing the intervention in the last 10 years.
“Nigeria commenced deployment with an initial pilot conducted in Katsina State in 2013 in six LGAs (districts), and a major milestone was attained in 2020 when all the 217 eligible LGAs in the nine Sahelian states were covered and 13,647,954 million children received the intervention.
“In 2021, the number of states implementing SMC increased from hitherto nine to 21 states, based on stratification done in the country. A hallmark achievement of coverage of all the current eligible states and LGAs have been maintained till date. In 2023, we covered all 411 eligible LGAs with over 28 million children reached.”
Emmanuel Shekarau, NMEP SMC Focal Person, explained that SMC is a drug-based intervention where children between 3 to 59 months are given anti-malaria solutions like Amodiaquine and similar drugs to prevent them from coming down with malaria during the peak of transmission.
“These children, because of their undeveloped immunity, are at risk of having high severity, and more likely to die of malaria than adults. So, the intervention helps to prevent them from coming down with malaria.”
He further explained that the annual SMC meeting often provide opportunities for members of endemic countries to exchange ideas and knowledge on the best ways to respond to malaria.
“The meeting is seasonal because we target rainy season when transmission of malaria is high. At the meeting, we extensively and critically analyse all submissions. We analyse data, review records, share progress and commit to guidance as might be provided for countries to improve implementation of interventions,” he said.