Seasonal malaria chemoprevention campaign to kickstart in Savannah Region

The Savannah Regional Health Directorate in collaboration with the National Malaria Control program is scheduled to carry out this year’s seasonal malaria chemoprevention campaign among children under five(5) years in the Savannah Region.

The exercise which will start on Monday 20th July 2020, will target children between the ages of 3-59 months given doses of antimalaria drugs 3 times every month for 4 months with the first face expected to start from Monday 20th July 2020 and ends on 26th July 2020.

This was disclosed by the Savannah Regional Health Director for Director Health services Dr Chrysantus Kubio during a stakeholders meeting held on 16th July, 20202 at the Savannah Regional Coordinating Council.

Dr Kubio in an interview said malaria cases are normally high during the rainy season which he described as the “high transmission season”.

He said during this period, the children are given some antimalaria medicines to prevent 5 million episodes of malaria that is the number of times children are affected with malaria and also prevent 20,000 deaths in Sahelian areas of West Africa as well many other African countries.

In Ghana, the National Malaria Control Program is limited only to children in the 5 Northern regions with about 25 million living in these areas earmarked to benefit from the packages.

The drugs according to Dr Kubio is well tolerated by children with a few reacting to it.

He said the exercise will engage the services of volunteers in the region who will be in every household to attend to the children and therefore called for the support of everybody in the region since the exercise will take place in all the districts in the region to ensure they assist the volunteers to have a successful fight against malaria.

He also used the opportunity to appeal to the media to emphasis on education to encourage the people to support the campaign to end malaria.

Deputy Savannah Regional Minister Hon. Yeyu Samuel Tikah on behalf of the Savannah Regional minister assured the health directorate of the full support of the program and appealed to the directorate to make sure the campaign to sleep under treated mosquito nets since malaria is affecting especially women and children in this part of the country and again reminded them to also include the education on Covid-19 since it is fast spreading in the Savannah Region.