Not less than 81,640 Nigerians die of malaria annually and Nigeria accounts for 19 percent of the global malaria burden, the Head of Programme Management of National Malaria Elimination Programme, Aro Afolabi, has said.
This, according to him, implies that every hour, nine Nigerians die from malaria.
He made this known at a media chart organised by National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) of the Federal Ministry of Health with the theme: ‘Bridging the resources gap for malaria elimination’, held in Abuja on Monday.
Afolabi, who was represented by Timothy Obot, said that Nigeria records 53 million cases of malaria annually and accounts for 25 percent of the global malaria burden and that the country would need a total of $108,237,465 to bridge the gap for 2019 to 2020.
According to him, implications of unfilled gaps include risk of increased malaria morbidity and mortality; the threat of a weakened workshop with decreased productivity with consequences on development danger of economic losses following years of investment loss of confidence in public health programmes; and Inability to use existing facilities to ensure sustainability of services beyond the tenure of donor funding.
He further stated that Nigeria alone accounted for 53 percent of the $1.3 billion funding gap for essential commodities that include 76 percent of the funding gap in Artemisirin Combination Therapy (ACT) and 86% of the funding gap for Rapid Diagnostic Test Kits (RDTs).
He stressed that Nigeria facesma financial gap of N504 billion ($1.4b) to implement its national malaria strategy by 2020 (WMR).
Earlier, Bala Mohammed, National Cordinator, NMEP, said the national malaria prevalence dropped from 42 percent to 27 percent between 2010 and 2015. These outcomes were as a result of the synergy and support by government at all levels as well as investments by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), United States’ President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the U.K Department for International Development (DfID), World Bank, African Development Bank and other Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partners.
