The Bauchi State government is targeting two million children for treatment under its 2023 Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) campaign.
The state commissioner for health, Dr Sabi’u Abdu Gwalabe, disclosed this during the 2023 SMC state level kick-off meeting for stakeholders in Bauchi.
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Gwalabe said the SMC intervention has reduced the burden of malaria infection in the state, pointing out that the intervention had reduced the morbidity and mortality rate of children due to malaria infection.
The commissioner commended the effort of the malaria consortium for implementing the seasonal malaria chemoprevention project, which he described as timely and in line with the state government’s priority aimed at improving health care services, especially for pregnant mothers and under five children.
Gwalabe reaffirmed the commitment of health authorities of the state to provide befitting healthcare services for the benefit of the common man and called on the stakeholders as well as ad-hoc personnel to be engaged to observe the laid down rules and regulations during the exercise in order to realise the set objectives.
The state project manager of the Malaria Consortium, Kabir Mohammed Algamawy, said BACATMA in collaboration with Malaria Consortium, planned to reach out to more over 2 million eligible children across the state for the administration of the drug while about 25,000 ad-hoc personnel at local government area (LGA) and community levels would be engaged during the exercise.
Algamawy said SMC drugs would be distributed in five cycles across the 323 wards in the state’s 20 LGAs from June to October 2023, adding that procurement of the drugs had reached an advanced stage.
It was gathered that the consortium would support the state with malaria test kits (RDT) and ACT drugs to support the 2023 SMC programme from June to October 2023.