Media in Malawi Called to Fight Malaria

Malawi National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) has said media need to play a crucial role to ensure that Mass registration for Mosquito net distribution is implemented effectively in the country.

NMCP, Programme Manager, Dr Michael Kayange said this on Monday in Lilongwe in an interview a head of the Mass registration due to start on July 1,2018.

He said the Media need to raise awareness among various communities on the need to register and receive a bed net in order to control the spread of Malaria.

“We believe the media is one of the key stakeholders in the exercise hence the need to play a critical role of sensitizing communities,” Kayange explained.

The Programme Manager said government is geared to ensuring that communities have access to bed nets and they should make use of them rightly to reduce prevalence rate of Malaria which is now at 24 per cent.

He urged that communities should appreciate the benefits of using bed nets during the night to curb the spread of Malaria within their locality.

“The best way to prevent Malaria from spreading further with your communities is simply sleeping in a treated net and promoting residual spray in houses. We want the Media to assist us to impart a lot of information so that people’s attitudes and behaviour towards usage of bed nets can change for the better,” Kayange added.

Chairperson for National Task Force (NTF) for Net distribution, Happy Kondowe said the mass registration exercise will start on July 1, 2018 and would be in phases.

He said the mass registration would be done in all 29 districts and households are encouraged to be registered in order to receive a net during the net distribution in October, 2018.

“We are appealing to heads of various households to be available during the mass registration and the process is not too involving. We will be looking at basic information of the householder per se.

We will be working with Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) and traditional leaders during the exercise in order to get best results for each area,” Kondowe stated.

Chief of Party for World Vision Malawi (WVM), Alexander Chikonga said his organization is principle recipient of Global Fund to distribute bed nest in the country

He said WVM would distribute 10.9 million nets throughout the country with a US$ 40.3 million funding for the exercise.