Over 950,000 children under five years of age have so far benefited from SMC/PLSG Malaria Prevention Intervention says Mr Ndak Kitzito

Over 950,000 Children under five (5) years of age in Plateau State have received their prescribed dosage of the Sulfadoxin, Pyrimethamine, Amodioquine (SPAQ) medication across all polling units of the 17 LGAs of the state during the first cycle of the Malaria Elimination project sponsored by the State Malaria Consortium, with counterpart funding from the Plateau State Government. These figures are expected to swell in the coming days as the second cycle commences on Thursday 25th July, 2024.

This was disclosed by the Coordinator of the Plateau State Malaria Elimination Program Mr Ndak Kizito during an interaction with Journalists at the NUJ Secretariat in Jos on Wednesday 24th July 2024. Flanked by the program manager of the State Malaria Consortium (SMC) Dr Mbwas Mashor and other key staff, Mr Kizito said that data from the just concluded first cycle of the SMC SPAQ administration to children under 5 years of age has shown significant compliance by communities.

He added that over 7,000 people have so far been engaged as Community Drug Distributors (CDDs) in addition to 35 State Supervisors, with an additional 60 State Superiors to be engaged to augment the work load in order to achieve more coverage.

“All the polling units of the 225 wards, across 17 Local Government Areas of Plateau State have been covered…950,000 children have been reached during the first cycle. But it’s our desire that if there were children during the first cycle that we were not able to reach, we want to see that all children under five during the second cycle are reached.”

“And going forward, we ensure that we make a lot of coverage in case there were people or children that were not found at home to be administered those SPAQ medications.”

“So we had a projected number at least over a million children should be reached. But ofcourse, you know that it happened last year. It ended in October last year, and we starteded again this May 2024. And of course, you know that the population of the country at large is increasing on daily basis.”

“So that’s why I said with over 950,000 children that we’ve reached, we so much believe that there are more children that need to be reached. And we’re encouraging our community drug distributors, the health facility workers at the primary healthcare centers, domicile in the communities, will do their best to ensure that at the end of the cycle, too, we will still come back and brief the public on the number of children that we. But it is our desire that the children are up to 2 million.”

“Malaria Consortium has produced the required medication that all those children will be reach. We are not running out or running short of the medications. So we are encouraging people. They should not be afraid of the availability of the medications. They are all there at the central medical store under the leadership of the Executive Secretary of the Drug and Medical Community Management Agency Pharmacist Kim Bot, they are at the warehoused at that particular medical store.”

He also announced that the stipends for the CDDs has been increased significantly from the previous N10,000 to over N30,000 to ensure that they do their best in their contribution to public health and saving lives. “Let me quickly say this, that the stipend that our community drug distributors do received in the past has been increased from N10,000 to over N30,000. So that is the boost and it encourages the people. Working those over 7000 people is a form of encouragement for them. But as I said, myself and the program manager of malaria Consortium, there is no amount of money that we pay to anybody working on this program that is commiserated to the sacrifice they make on daily basis to see that they reach those children. So the fact that we’ve increased this stipend, we also tell them that they are working for humanity. If you are working for humanity trying to prevent a child from getting malaria, and maybe if not, if the child don’t have access to that medication, the child may even die as a result of malaria.”

Mr Kizito highlighted some of the challenges of the program, particularly security but expressed gratitude to God that no single personnel had any security issues. “…it’s the rainy season and there are a lot of hard to reach areas, especially in our villages, that you discover that these people move inside the rain to reach those particular areas. There are situations whereby some of them had to sleep at the other end until the next day. The rain, you know, get to give way before they cross back and, you know, continue their job for the four days that they walk. Of course, you know that in Plateau State you cannot undermine the issue of security. There are high and medium risk areas in terms of security. And if you go to such local governments, you have to look for people that can actually go out and in of those particular areas to carry out such activities for you. But to the glory of God, we did not get any report of attack on any of the people that we recruited, you know, in the course of that particular duty.”