Malaria Diagnosis Is Free In Rivers – WHO

The World Health
Organisation (WHO) has stated that testing for malaria for all categories of persons in Rivers State has been paid for by the State government in all government health facilities, hence it is free.
National Professional Officer (malaria) for the WHO in Nigeria, Dr Oluseye Babatunde made this known in an exclusive interview with The Tide recently in a post-inauguration of “State malaria in pregnancy working Group (MiPGW) in Port Harcourt.
On the part of pregnant women, he said, it includes free treatment from the first trimester (three months) through delivery, adding that every pregnant woman has the right to demand for not only the malaria medication, but also long lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINS).
Dr Babatunde explained that it is in line with the reviewed National Guideline on Malaria Control in Nigeria.
“The National Guideline, which has been  reviewed, emphasised some key new updates on how we should prevent and treat malaria in pregnancy.
“One of these things is that the prevention of malaria in pregnancy requires giving preventive treatment once every month from the second month trimester, which is after 18 weeks of pregnancy, so that it will prevent malaria occurrence”, he said.
For every other person however, Dr Babatunde explained further, only the testing is free, but that they have the right to demand to be tested.
“If they have fever, they should not take paracetamol, they should not go to a chemist and take drugs. If they go to a government-owned health facility, they should demand that the health worker should carry out malaria test for them.
“Rivers State Government is giving the test free in all the health facilities for every one because the policy is that we should not treat without test. We want to be sure that there is malaria, knowing that every fever is not malaria. So they should demand to be tested before taking any medication”, Babatunde concluded.
Also speaking, the Federal Ministry of Health, Abuja, representative of “Malaria Elimination Programme”, Dr  Nnamdi Nweneri stated that malaria affects everybody and it is the cause of a large proportion of deaths in sub-sahara Africa, including Nigeria.
Nigeria, he said, “accounts for about a quarter  of the global burden when it comes to malaria. The annual report shows that in the whole world we have about 584,000 deaths as a result of malaria.

Sogbeba Dokubo