Access Bank, Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PAHA) and Hacey Health Initiative are scaling-up campaign through preventive measures to end malaria epidemics especially for suburban dwellers and people living in underprivileged environments across Nigerian and Africa.
The organisations made the call recently during a community sensitization session organized under the ‘Malaria to Zero’ initiative for residents in Mushin and its environs, where over 1000 long-lasting insecticide treated nets distributed.
Omobolanle Victor-Laniyan, head of sustainability, Access Bank Plc, said that the mortality rate attributed to malaria is more pervasive in the under-served the grassroots communities.
“These people need to be reached because they have high burden of malaria cases resulting from their inability to afford long lasting insecticide-treated nets to help the prevention of malaria,” Victor-Laniyan said.
It is apt to note that every year, about 100 million cases of malaria are recorded worldwide with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for up to 88 per cent of total incidences, and 90 per cent of malaria-induced mortality.
Pregnant women and children are the most afflicted group, with 429, 000 lives lost in 2015 alone.
The resulting health costs from lost productivity, prevention and treatment means that the Nigerian economy loses close to $1.13 billion yearly as families, businesses and government are deprived developmental capital.
Despite huge investments in projects targeted at ending the malaria scourge, national indices still fall short because of challenges in funding, poor data for decision making, fragmented governance system, and poor service delivery in hard-to-reach communities.
Muntaqa Umar Sadiq, chief executive officer of PSHA, the lead technical partner of the initiative, there is need to establish an innovative financing platform to compliment efforts of the Government and target the root causes of poor outcomes in the fight against malaria.
“Despite significant investment in the health system, we are yet to see commensurate results,”Sadiq said. “Current programmes are inadequate and we need to do things differently, we need to be more innovative and rethink our intervention. We have had issues with data and complex governance arrangements,” Muntaqi stated.”
He queried why Nigeria can’t be on the same platform with some other countries such as Morocco, Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan that have been able to achieve zero malaria deaths.
Owolabi Isaiah, project director, Hacey Health Initiative, said that it is imperative that a synergy exists between the government effort and the private sector contribution in order to put an end to malaria in Africa. He added that this is the underlying principle of Malaria to Zero initiative as the project works towards significantly reducing deaths associated with malaria by 2020.
Josephine Okojie
