Malaria prevention education should be sustained

Dr Mavis Oppong Addo, the Greater Accra Regional Malaria Case Management facilitator, has called for increased and sustained education on malaria prevention to properly manage the cases in Ghana.

She said even though the country has made strides in malarial control, the disease is still prevalent, hence the need for intensification of education.

In this direction, the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), in collaboration with the Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate, has rolled out training for healthcare practitioners within the metropolis.

The training is to equip participants with preventive and curative measures of malaria to also train other health workers along the healthcare delivery chain.

Dr Addo told the Ghana News Agency during the training at Tema that with the support of various stakeholders, especially the NMCP, malaria case management training was organized for healthcare givers to empower them to treat malaria cases properly to achieve the aim of eradicating malaria from the communities.

She said, “malaria case management training for healthcare givers is critical towards the control of the spread and management of complications associated with having malaria.”

Mr Seth Amoako, a member of the Tema Metro Health Directorate team, said to achieve Zero Malaria, the population should be aware and use all the preventive measures to protect themselves from malaria, therefore the need to put in enough measures to educate the people.

He identified some of the interventions as the rolled-out includes giving out insecticide-treated mosquito nets to pregnant women during weighing and antenatal service as well as giving malaria preventive SP medication.

Mr Amoako added that, the sidelines of the training that people needed to understand the basic concepts of malaria and seek medical attention immediately after they show symptoms of fever for effective treatment.

He said, “People shouldn’t presume every fever is malaria and stay at home, it could become severe and worst-case scenario result in death. But it can be managed effectively to reduce morbidity and mortality.”

Madam Elizabeth Appiah Bonnah, Tema Metro Malaria Focal Person, on her side said seven people were trained at the regional level to in turn train 259 participants from 20 public and private health facilities at the district level in Tema.

She said the training stressed data management to gather everything malaria-related in the health facilities in Tema.

According to her, the data would help the directorate to plan and know the limited resources available, how to manage them very well and where to channel the resources.

Source: GNA