Over 150,000 children in Upper West receive Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has administered the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) drug to an estimated 150,921 children in the Upper West Region.
The targeted population aged from 3-59 months received the drug between 8th and 13th of August (2016) and it is expected to fortify them against the malaria illness.
Dr Winfred Ofosu, Acting Upper West Regional Director of Health Services, said this at a press briefing in Wa.
He said out of the targeted vulnerable population, 25,154 of them were below age one while 125,768 fell within the age bracket of 12-59 months.
He said a total of 3,189 personnel comprising 2,800 community volunteers, 66 coordinators, 198 regional supervisors, 55 district volunteers, 48 national supervisors and 22 drivers were used for the exercise in the Region.
He said the goal of the effort was to help prevent maternal deaths and ensure that children did not die from contracting the malaria disease.
Dr Ofosu urged mothers to avail their children for all such exercises and ensure they take the recommended full dose prescribed for them.
Mr Samuel Oppong, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), said SMC effort is the intermittent administration of full treatment courses of an antimalarial medicine during the malaria season to prevent malarial illness.
He said it was to help maintain therapeutic antimalarial drug concentrations in the blood of beneficiaries throughout the period of the greatest malarial risk.
Mr Oppong said SMC interventions had been proven to be efficient, cost-effective, well tolerated and feasible.
He said in the past three years, studies have shown that by providing healthy children with a monthly course of two existing malaria medicines, namely; Sulfadoxine Pyrimethamine (SP) and Amodiaquine (AQ)- during peak transmission season could prevent 20,000 deaths annually.
Mr Oppong said community participation and ownership of the SMC implementation programme, training of community health volunteers and the role of mothers were integral to the success of the exercise.
The SMC programme is being sponsored by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Global Fund.
Source: GNA