World Malaria Day 2008
Goodwill message at the commemoration of the 1ST World Malaria Day, 25 April, 2008 at Gwagwalada Area Council, Abuja Protocol Malaria is a serious health problem. It affects between 300 to 500 million people annually with more than 1 million deaths. It affects mostly young children under the age of five and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in death rate of nearly 3,000 every day. In Africa malaria causes approximately 20% of all child deaths and in Nigeria over 400,000 children die annually due to this preventable disease. In the last ten years, UNICEF has been part of both the Global and country level Roll Back Malaria Initiative including Nigeria. UNICEF supported the first African Summit on Roll Back Malaria, which took place in April 2000 in Abuja, Nigeria. The African Heads of State, among other things, resolved that by 2005 at least 60% each of correct and prompt treatment, of children under five and pregnant sleeping under ITNs, and pregnant women receiving intermittent preventive treatment (IPT), popularly known as Abuja Declaration. Since that declaration in 2000 effort to control malaria has led to the distribution of 15 million insecticide treated nets covering 6 million households in Nigeria out of about 28 million households. This means that children and pregnant women living in 22 million households are still vulnerable to the scourge of malaria. We need to redouble our efforts to reach this group. World Malaria Day (WMD) on April 25 of every year was set aside for the commemoration of this event and to monitor progress made towards attainment of the targets. This year's theme: "Malaria, a disease without boarders" with the slogan: "Fight malaria, invest in the future” emphasizes the extent of the problem and calls for action against it to guarantee the future. Honourable Minister, in your last Press Briefing you mentioned that the government has set the year 2010 to halve the burden of malaria in Nigeria. I also understand that N150 billion has been set aside to fight malaria in the next three years. I commend these steps which are in consonance with the theme of today, to fight malaria and invest in the future. UNICEF remains committed to the RBM goals and had since after the Summit in 2000 been coordinating the networking with RBM Partners in the promotion of insecticides treated mosquito nets (ITNs) in the country. Over 800,000 LLINs and 55,000 long lasting insecticides kits for the re-treatment of mosquito nets have been procured and distributed by UNICEF in the past three years, with support from the Government of Japan. And this year we are expecting to procure over 150,000 LLINs for children under five and pregnant women in the UNICEF focus LGAs. Thank you for listening.
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