Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency today held a meeting with all stakeholders and partners to discuss activities line up for the world malaria day and plan on how to meet the save one million lives target. The meeting came up with a resolution to end the indiscriminate act of using Long Lasting Insecticide treated nets (mosquito nets) wrongly in the communities.
DG CRSPHCDA, Dr Betta Edu while speaking used the opportunity to introduced the new Program Manager for State Malaria Elimination Programme (SMEP), Dr Asuquo Ekwe to the partners. Advising Dr Ekwe, to ensure everyone is carried along in all malaria activities.
She hinted that there is plan for the World Malaria day Program to be move to Central part of Cross River State with the support of the Governor Wife, Her Excellency, Dr Linda Ayade whose NGO Mediatrix Development Foundation will be the leading partner. The movement of the Malaria day commemoration is for expansion of sensitization about the killer disease to other parts of the State. According to her information is health, thus the message on prevention of malaria must get to other parts of the state.
Dr Edu Stated that the State will use this year World Malaria day to advocate to end use of mosquito net for Agricultural activities like fishing, covering crops, filtering palm oil, kennel oil, garri, pap etc. We will also try to retrieve old mosquito nets from the communities. The wife of the Governor will be launching the “The Hang Up Campaign” in collaboration state, partners and Red Cross Society who will go into villages and hang the mosquito nets with the help of Community leaders who will be engaged in the exercise. She used the medium to call on all partners to support the process as it will form a strong point for Save one million live project which Cross River State is a assessed for. She noted that the mosquito nets when used for farming can cause food poisoning, cancer and death in some cases. It is to be hung not used for food processing
Earlier Speaking, Program Manager SMEP, Dr Asuquo Ekwe said the World Malaria Day commemoration is an annual event in Nigeria to reflect on the journey so far while serving as a reminder to all stakeholders and partners that malaria is still a killer disease bearing the highest burden in Nigeria.
Also speaking, the State Coordinator of WHO, Dr Egbe advised that the state should first get the present malaria prevalence now, from M&E/ malaria focal person, and do an evaluation 2 months after to see if there was any improvements. He called for harmonization of malaria data at the LGA level, and advised that we not only retrieve the old net from the communities but should used the mass media to educate the people on the use of long lasting insecticide treated nets and the dangers of using them with agricultural produce which is poisonous to humans.
Finally, the Permanent Secretary CRSPHCDA, Mr Echeghe Mark Oma lauded all the partners for their continuous support to the State while appealing for more of it from them.
The meeting ended with setting up of committees for the operation hang up campaign and retrieving of old mosquito nets from villages which chemonics will be part of. The DG charged everyone to think of solutions to recycling of old nets, which will further prohibit our people from using them for farming.
Several representative of partners from WHO, UNICEF, CHEMONICS, Catholic Relief services, LMCU, SFH, FHI360, as well as the representative of Com. For information and CRBC news men. attended the meeting.
