Medical expert Olugbenga Mokuolu has urged for an enhancement in Nigeria’s malaria data to accurately represent the extent of the disease.
Mokuolu, serving as the Special Adviser to the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare on Malaria, made this call during an interview in Lagos in commemoration of the World Malaria Day on April 25.
The day, celebrated annually, highlights global efforts to end malaria, stressing the necessity for ongoing political dedication and investment in its prevention and eradication.
This year’s theme, “Accelerating the fight against malaria for a more equitable world,” underscores the urgency of the cause.
Mr Mokuolu also emphasised the need to strengthen the culture of diagnostic testing before treating malaria to document actual cases.
“In a situation where we continue to practice empirical treatment for all fever, we are going to create a false record that exaggerates the number of malaria cases.
“If 10 people come in with fever, there’s a tendency for a health worker who didn’t conduct a test on the patient to diagnose seven for malaria, and that’s what the record would reflect.
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“But if you test, you will be surprised that maybe two or a maximum four out of the 10 test positive for malaria,” he said.
Mr Mokuolu noted that more in-country information had been gathered due to the entomological monitoring set-up.
He said integrating a multisectoral approach in the malaria response had become crucial to achieving an impactful intervention.
According to him, primary healthcare centres are being strengthened across the country to prevent, detect and reduce the burden of the disease.
The professor lamented that budgetary allocation to malaria had been low at the federal and state levels and called for an improvement in funding to stimulate progress.
Similarly, Wellington Oyibo, consultant medical parasitologist, said research by his team across the country showed that primary source data on malaria at health facilities were inaccurate.
Mr Oyibo lamented that overdiagnosis and over-treatment of malaria were prevalent in health facilities nationwide, as all fevers are treated as malaria, with strong economic and life-threatening effects on patients and communities.
He said training and supervision of healthcare workers were critical to improve the quality of data analysed and reviewed for targeted interventions.
