By Isah Hussein
The Nisa Premiere Hospital, Abuja on Monday conducted a sensitization campaign on malaria accompanied with free medical outreach to residents of Dakin Biyu community in Jabi, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as part of activities to commemorate the 2022 World Malaria Day.
The theme for the this year’s World Malaria Day is: “Harness Innovation to Reduce the Malaria Disease Burden and Save Lives,”
While speaking during the exercise, Head of Department, Business Development, Nisa Hospital, Mr. Williams Ewache Mathew said the outreach exercise is part of the hospital’s corporate social responsibilities and it’s something they do constantly for example, the immunization for children which holds every Monday.
He said “today is world malaria day set aside by the World Health Organization (WHO) to advance the advocacy for people to get more awareness about malaria and it’s not an isolated event as it is marked worldwide and the tropic regions, where Nigeria falls is one of the areas with most cases and so it is important for us apart from being in business, to give back to the people- giving them treatment.
He stressed that “there were basically 3 components of the sensitization campaign which are; blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring, free malaria testing and drugs, lecture on malaria prevention and control and all these are key components that often enhances health.
“For instance, we often hear a lot about cardiac arrest and this is the result of hypertension which emanates from not regularly checking blood pressure because when the heart is clogged, blood flow is impeded and this can lead to cardiac arrest.
“So, what we are doing is to ensure that health is enhanced and what’s happening here today is to identify those with acute cases which is why we have a doctor here to look at the test results and then give recommendations.
“We are actually ready to attend to 100 people, so everything we have here is meant to take care of 100 people,”
He added further that “These people here will take the message further, we have started the advocacy, they will take it to the entire community and by extension the entire nation would be aware of the dangers of malaria.
Also, Dr. Amuta Wilson, the Nisa doctor at the event said malaria is caused by parasites and transmitted to people through the bites of the infected female anopheles mosquito.
He said “malaria is usually accompanied with intermittent fever such that , there’s a period of fever after which the body returns to normal temperature and then the fever starts again.
“Then, there is headache, generalised body weakness, body pains, joint aches, loss of appetite.
So when all of these are present, they give significant possiblity of malaria.
“The disease is common among pregnant women and children under the age of 5 who are most vulnerable.
He said drug resistant malaria, which have become quite common is caused when people fail to complete full dosage prescriptions for their malaria treatment.
So in order to prevent the drug resistant malaria, he stressed that it is important that we make sure we take the correct medications, the correct doses and for the correct period of time.
We need to reduce the burden of the disease by using insecticide treated nets because as at the last meeting of WHO in 2016, it was still listed as one of major ways in the prevention of malaria and just as it is usually said, prevention is cheaper and better than cure , as well as caring for and cleaning our environment.
The campaign exercise closed with free drugs and mosquito repellent creams being distributed to the participants.
One of the beneficiaries, Felix Maigari, thanked the hospital for the gesture, saying the knowledge he got during the lecture will help him to prevent malaria in his home.
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