Health
Mass mosquito spray back on the agenda as Tayebwa argues it’s most efficient method to fight Malaria
World Malaria Day celebrations
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa has directed the Ministry of Health to work out a strategy of eradicating Malaria and present it to Parliament within a period of three months.
After taking part in a walk against Malaria, held under the theme “Zero Malaria starts with you”, Tayebwa gave the ministry of Health three months to develop a comprehensive strategy to eradicate malaria.
The walk was organised as one of the events to commemorate World No Malaria Day held every April 25.
The average economic loss in Uganda due to malaria annually is over $500 million. In 2022, the World Health Organisation reported that there were an estimated 12,7 million malaria cases and over 17,556 estimated deaths in the country.
Malaria is a leading cause of mortality in the country, ranking Uganda number three among countries with the highest malaria burden in the world.
Tayebwa noted that many countries that have adopted the spraying of mosquitoes have succeeded in the fight against Malaria.
Challenging the ministry headed by Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng to work with the World Health Organisation to iron out any scientific related hurdles, parliament is ready to give all the support and the required funding towards an efficient approach to end Malaria by 2030.
“My major focus is on the strategy for eliminating malaria , this treatment won’t work , treatment is so costly, the money we are spending on treating malaria is so much and yet we are losing young people, I am asking people in the Ministry of Health, why aren’t we spraying who is blocking you, you imagine countries are accusing us of exporting malaria. To the minister give us a strategy and we start implementing,” Tayebwa said
Tayebwa emphasizes that the business of saying that Parliament said we cannot spray; this is a new Parliament, we are going to take charge. If we agree on spraying, we shall provide the money.’
In response to the Deputy Speaker’s request for the Ministry to reconsider massive spraying, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng said that spraying would be the efficient approach to end malaria and the Ministry is ready to re-strategize after the method was politicised some years ago.
“Replanning requires that we identify a safe chemical that can be used so that we carry out the spraying and bring down this burden of malaria and stop putting ourselves as number 3 in the race against donating malaria so as a ministry we shall go back and replan, develop the strategy and present it…parliament has committed to give us the resources”-Aceng noted
This after Dr. Aceng called on the Ugandan government to increase domestic funding towards the fight against malaria since many development partners have cut their funding towards the Anti-Malaria campaigns.
“We are all aware that funding for malaria is leveling off from all our partners …..recently meeting in Youde we all signed a commitment to end malaria a in our own countries using our own domestic resources, it is time for Uganda to mobilise its own domestic resources to malaria,” Aceng stressed.
Dr. Timothy Batuwa, the chairman Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Malaria that organisers of the Walk, welcomed the suggestion by the deputy speaker Tayebwa to have a team of scientists at the community level to conduct comprehensive research in order to make informed decisions on the most efficient interventions to take.
“We want to go down and mobilize a group of 6 people per village, this group will be trained by scientists to identify mosquito sources, thereafter they get trained to collect samples from those sources to be handed over to the universities, to the research institutions like UVIRI, to the Ministry of Health to identify the mosquito types , these mosquito control teams in the villages can give government good information upon which appropriate vector control method can be applied,”Dr.Batuwa explains.
Dr. Batuwa, the Jinja South MP who is also the shadow minister for Health adds that these teams would be equipped to implement the interventions for malaria control and also keep monitoring malaria infections.
“Once the Ministry of health prescribes those methods these very teams will implement and they will be able to monitor and see whether those sources have mosquitoes or not and we shall get other results manifesting the same community we have hospitals, in those hospital we shall need to know whether they are still malaria cases, people coming for OPD or inpatient wanting treatment against Malaria” Dr. Batuwa explains
The World Malaria Day is commemorated on the 25th of April annually, but the National celebrations will be held on the 3rd of May in Kibuku District, one of the districts in Uganda with the highest number of Malaria cases.
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