Malaria Prevention Program in Nigeria Aims at Universal Bed Net Coverage

With Africa’s largest population (estimated at 160 million), Nigeria bears a greater malaria burden than any other country in the world. Over 300,000 Nigerians die each year of the disease.

On May 8, the country’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) and the Kano State Government launched the first wave of a national bed net distribution campaign designed to reduce by half the number of malaria deaths in the country over the next few years. If successful, the campaign could have significant impact on Africa’s overall malaria burden.

“By the end of 2010, over 60 million treated bed nets will blanket the country,” announced Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Babatunde Osotimehin, at a recent malaria summit in Washington, DC.

Sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets is one important part of the solution. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership, a global partnership of malaria donors, recommends a comprehensive strategy that includes improving diagnosis, getting highly effective anti-malarial drugs quickly to all who need them, spraying interior walls of houses with long-lasting insecticide so mosquitoes die when they land there to rest, and giving pregnant women two doses of an anti-malarial to prevent them from getting malaria. Nigeria’s program has begun implementing this recommendation.