Ho sustaining gains in malaria fight

The Ho Municipal Directorate of Health Services is continuing community engagement on the use of treated bed nets and environmental management to sustain gains made in the fight against malaria.

The Directorate is also conducting regular vector control exercises with support from Zoomlion and building staff capacity to keep malaria figures down and prevent deaths.

Mr Prosper Amegadzi, Municipal Focal Person on Malaria said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on World Malaria Day.

He said the Directorate was quietly celebrating no under-five malaria death for 2017 and 2018 and no malaria related death for pregnant women for the same period and working hard to make it better.

Mr Amegadzi said after the distribution of 90,000 treated bed nets in 2018, the Municipality recorded significant decline in malaria cases from52, 457 in 2017 to 40,122 in 2018.

He said the Directorate’s target was to further reduce the 2018 figure to about 25,000 in 2019 through the supply of more treated bed nets and called for support from all stakeholders.

Mr Amegadzi said the Directorate’s major concerns were presumptive treatment at some clinics and patients unwillingness to take full course of treatment as prescribed by medical doctors.

He also lamented about the reluctance of some people, especially city dwellers to sleep in treated bed nets though they have them.

The Municipal Malaria Focal Person in 2017 told the Ghana News Agency that though 70 per cent of residents in the Ho Municipal area had treated mosquito nets, only 40 per cent used the net to prevent malaria.

He said a survey conducted on the shortfall revealed that a good number of people in the Municipality only used the nets for visitors to create “good impressions”.