Pregnant, lactating mothers and children under five get ITNs
The distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) to pregnant women, lactating mothers and parents of children under five years of age continues to positively support other malaria control measures.
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This has potentially been added to the core package of the World Health Organisation-recommended measures for malaria prevention, in support of a vast shift in the malaria elimination agenda on the continent.
This is being done by stepping up advocacy to recapture missing opportunities of the malaria elimination agenda, providing an opportunity to step up advocacy directed at whipping up public support for the malaria elimination agenda and specifically for the proposed world’s first malaria vaccine that would be available in selected areas, beginning in 2018.
In support of this objective, more than 200 pregnant women, lactating mothers and parents of children under five years of age in the Glefe Community at Dansoman in Accra have received insecticide-treated mosquito nets, as part of activities marking this year’s World Malaria Day (WMD) which fell on Monday, April 25 this year.
Beneficiaries
Distributed by the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), with support from the MTN Foundation.
The beneficiaries were also educated on how to keep their surroundings clean to prevent mosquitoes from breeding there.
The theme for AMMREN’s WMD celebration was: “The malaria elimination agenda: Empowering communities to get involved.”
Glefe, a waterlogged community near the Dansoman beach and the Pambros Lagoon, is surrounded by dirty ponds as the indiscriminate dumping of rubbish has left the gutters choked with rubbish and stagnant water, creating a conducive environment for different types of diseases.
A pharmacist at the Police Hospital, Mrs Ellen Sam, who spoke to the beneficiaries about malaria elimination, called on them to sleep under treated mosquito nets.
According to her, treated mosquito nets had over the years proven to be effective, killing the mosquito on contact.
She advised them not to collect the nets and keep them in their rooms or use them for other purposes such as the sewing of wedding gowns, but rather hang them in their rooms so that they would protect pregnant women and children under five, who were the most vulnerable, from contracting malaria.
She said in Ghana and Africa malaria was the bane of many women, children and the elderly, a situation which needed to be stopped.
Behaviour change
She called on the beneficiaries to be advocates of change in the community by keeping a clean environment to prevent diseases from attacking them and their children.
She also called on them to cover all clean water in their homes, saying that was the perfect breeding ground for malaria.
Mrs Sam, who is also an AAMREN Board Chair member, called on parents to send their children under five to the nearest hospital anytime they had convulsions and desist from alluding to superstition or witchcraft.
She also urged them to adhere strictly to treatment regimens so that the malaria parasite would be totally killed in their blood streams.
The Impact and Sustainable Manager, MTN Foundation, Ms Rhodalyn Entuah-Mensah, said the foundation was happy to support worthy causes such as what AMMREN was undertaking within the Glefe community.