LAGOS – The Federal Government yesterday renewed its resolve to eliminate malaria in the country by the year 20-20.
The National Coordinator, National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), Dr Nnenna Ezeigwe, said this in an interview with Journalists in Lagos.
Ezeigwe said all hands must be on deck to achieve a malaria free country by the targeted year through the Test, Treat and Track (TTT) policy.
She advised healthcare service providers to sacrifice a little time to test patients and urged patients to get tested before receiving treatment for malaria.
She explained that the malaria policy states that every suspected malaria case must be tested and confirmed before treatment can be administered on patients.
According to her, the TTT policy has been in force for many years in the country with little or no compliance.
“But we (FG) discovered that it has not been complied with. After looking carefully at the problem, we discovered that over 60 per cent of the Nigerian population go to the pharmacists and patent medicine dealers for treatment of malaria and other ailments.
“This is why we decided to work in collaboration with the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN) and we are working together with the Lagos State Government, Association of Patent Medicine Vendors to make sure that it is achieved.
“We have discussed with PCN and we agreed that pharmacists and patent medicine vendors can test for malaria after been properly trained.
“The programme is aimed at implementing the policy that has been on ground. The process might take time but it would be worth it at the end because it would be saving so many lives,’’ she said.
She noted that there were no strict enforcement mechanism for defaulters nor would they be arrested or charged to court, but that there can be sanctions.
“But if we discover that PPMV continues to treat without testing and there is evidence for it, then such persons will not be registered.
“This is part of the agreement we have with the PCN that it should be part of their registration criteria, they will be properly trained and then implement it this is what we expect,‘’ she said.
Ezeigwe said that since 2009 chloroquine has not been the drug of choice after several studies.
“It was beneficial at some point but then at some point resistance sets in, the parasite we were fighting developed resistant to the drug (chloroquine) and then it became useless as a malaria drug.
“So the current treatment that has been proven to be very effective is the Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT) and we are also monitoring the ACT to check if there is any resistant at any point.
“But for now we are comfortable to say that ACT is still very efficacious in this country.
“Although in some places like South East Asia they have noticed some resistance, but in Nigeria right now we do not have any such issues so ACT remains the drug of choice, chloroquine is not recommended.