From Femi Oyelola, Kaduna
The Association of Civil Society Organisations in Malaria Control, Immunization and Nutrition (ACOMIN) has called on the Government to see Malaria elimination as a project that demands immediate attention, saying the government should provide adequate financial and human resources to supplement international support for an elimination programme.
Kaduna State Programme Officer of ACOMIN, Ogidi Nicodemus asserted this during a media briefing on the Global Fund Malaria community-led monitoring project, in Kaduna yesterday
Nicodemus opined that a separate funding allocation and management in the health sector will help promote continuity, and accountability, and improve grassroots outreach, intervention, and engagement.
He added that Nigeria should set up and implement a functional Malaria surveillance system to collect data on Malaria cases and monitor eradication progress.
“Malaria can only be eradicated in Nigeria when the government feels committed to it as a national responsibility.
“Malaria hyper-endemicity is a major public health crisis that requires the government’s deliberate and consistent efforts to follow recommended strategies to eliminate and eradicate Malaria in Nigeria and save people from deaths and Malaria-associated health consequences”, he said.
In his remarks, the State Chairman of ACOMIN, Obadiah Diji, said Nigeria still has a long way to go to achieve control of malaria due to certain challenges confronting malaria intervention.
“The increased difficulty in accessing hard-to-reach communities due to insecurity ravaging many parts of the country and drug resistance by the malaria parasite is the reason why ACOMIN has introduced the community-centered initiatives- such as the Community-led Monitoring project to approach the fight against malaria in such challenging areas.
“The initiative implemented so far has brought many advantages such as increased ingenuity, flexibility in identifying and addressing the root cause of failed interventions, and enhanced accountability among others.
“The community-centered initiative being implemented by ACOMIN has yielded positive results and we are calling on all government ministries and agencies to include or scale up community-based initiatives in their programs and the donors to increase their support for community-based initiatives to help achieve the elimination of malaria in Kaduna State and Nigeria at large.
“As part of a national effort to address the challenges of Malaria in Nigeria, ACOMIN has been re-engaged by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) under the ongoing Global Fund (GF) Malaria Grant to continue implementing, and the civil society component has successfully done this from 2019 to 2020.
‘The grant is presently being implemented in the thirteen (13) GF-supported states of Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Kwara, Niger, Taraba, Gombe, Yobe, Adamawa, Ogun, Osun and Delta States and the project covers 8 LGAs in each state.
“In Kaduna State, the selected LGAs are: Sabon Gari, Soba, Ikara, Jema’a, Jaba, Kudan, Kaura, and Kaduna South respectively., and we have achieved progress to ensure the elimination of malaria in the state and we are calling for increase support to enable us to achieve total elimination of malaria”, he said.
