Malaria season is here!

Compiled by Omogoroye Olumide

Malaria season is here!

I am sitting on a couch in my room and watching the rain pour down outside. Fresh cool breeze blowing everywhere. No doubts, rainy season is here, and barely does a day go by without it raining for few hours. Sometimes it starts raining in the morning, giving us a cold environment to start our day with, and later in the day it becomes sunny, providing a warm and humid environment. Other times, it sunny at first and then it rains later in the day. At times we experience a different scenario where it drizzles all day and everywhere is cold. The streets are filled with ponds and lakes, market places are now like swamps, all these are results of dirty lifestyles of our people. You need a four- wheeled vehicle to move about comfortably in this environment.

The ponds and warmth are undoubtedly a good breeding condition for female anopheles mosquitoes- the primary host and transmission vector of plasmodium which causes malaria. And as expected there is an increase in the number of mosquitoes as well as the number of malaria cases. If you visit any hospital right now you can confirm this, just get permission to do the data analysis of patients who visited the hospital from the start of this season, you will be overwhelmed by the result. 

In Nigeria, malaria has become a common ailment, people don't see it as a challenge anymore. But malaria is a major public health problem in Nigeria where it accounts for more cases and 

deaths than any other country in the world. Malaria is a risk for 97% of Nigeria’s population. The remaining 3% of the population live in the 

malaria free highlands. There are an estimated 100 million malaria cases with over 300,000 deaths per year in Nigeria. This compares with 215,000 deaths per year in Nigeria 

from HIV/AIDS.

Malaria contributes to an estimated 11% of maternal mortality. You can see now that malaria is a very big challenge in this part of the world. The truth is, the number of malaria cases reaches it's peak during and immediately after the rainy season. 

Children of age 5 below are more likely to die after being infected with this disease. Pregnant women are also a vulnerable group; malaria is responsible for 50% of pregnant women death.

From the above statistics, we can see that there is need to prevent and control the spread of malaria disease; most especially in this season. We need to protect our lives and those of vulnerable groups who are more badly affected by this disease. What are the measures we need to take inorder to prevent and control the spread of malaria?

    Prevention and control measures for malaria

1.Proper environmental management: our environment has a direct influence on our health; the state of our environment is a key factor in determining the state of our well-being. Our environment should be well taken care of, starting from our homes , to our streets and to other public places. In this season, bushes tend to grow around our houses and they serve has a breeding sites for mosquitoes. Let's make sure we clear all bushes around us. 

We should also adopt good waste disposal techniques. Pouring of dirts in floods and drainage pathways is very bad and it's dangerous to our health. We should make sure that our drainage pathways are free from dirts inorder to ensure free flow of water. When water doesn't flow it stinks and mosquitoes also will nurture their larvae in them. Cans should be buried or disposed properly, so that mosquitoes won't turn them into breeding sites.So it's necessary to keep our environments clean as it goes a long way in the prevention and control of malaria.

2. Indoor residual spraying: after keeping our environments clean we still need to spray indoors with insecticides inorder to kill the adult mosquitoes. These insecticides must be human and environmental friendly, so as not to cause another problem for ourselves.

3. Sleeping under treated mosquito nets: because of the nocturnal feeding style of the female anopheles mosquito, most malaria cases occur during the night. It's obvious to everyone that we experience mosquito bites mostly during the night. So it is advisable to sleep under treated mosquito nets. These nets have been treated with insecticides and proven to be the most efficient preventive measure.

4. Use of mosquito repellants: at night, it is advisable to wear long clothes that covers the whole body. Apply mosquito repellants on the exposed part of the body. Don't apply these repellants on the whole body, wear clothes that covers your body and apply the repellants only on exposed part of the body. These repellants now come in various forms; we have them as creams, body sprays etc.

Malaria doesn't have a vaccine yet, people who are infected with it are treated with antimalarial drugs. So anyone can be infected with this disease. Prevention of malaria is better than it's cure, let us together stop the spread of malaria in our society.