Tanzania for indoor DDT spraying next year in fight against malaria

Njonanje Samwel | 02 Oct 2023
IPPMedia Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Prof David Mwakyusa said yesterday that the country starts indoor spraying of DDT insecticides against mosquitoes early next year in the drive to control malaria.

He said presently every five minutes one person dies out of malaria in the country adding that worse still ``Nearly half of the population (about 18 million people) suffers from malaria annually.``

Minister Mwakyusa revealed this in Dar es Salaam at a function to host her Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium.

Princess Astrid is in the country for a five-day tour as World Health Organization Malaria Roll back Ambassador.

He said the government is looking for USD300m from different sources to enable it also provide three treated bed nets per household in its effort to roll back malaria through a programme known as Universal Access to long lasting treated nets.

He said, statistics from outpatient?s departments show that one in every two patients attending hospitals are infected with malaria.

He said various steps have been taken by the government to meet the Abuja target-2000 which focuses on reducing malaria morbidity and mortality to 50 percent by the year 2010.

He named the steps as emphasize on early diagnoses of malaria infection, effectiveness use of insecticides on killing malaria vectors, researches and proper use of drugs.

The other steps according to Prof. Mwakyusa are prevention of malaria to pregnancies and newborns through intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) for pregnant women and insecticides treatment nets (ITN).

According to Prof. Mwakyusa Kagera region has been selected as the pilot of the programme.

For his part, National Malaria Control Programme Manager, Dr. Alex Mwita said lack of resources especially fund has made the government delay in implementing various strategies to reduce malaria.

He gave the current example of switching over malaria treatment from Sulphar and pyremethamine combination to artermether combination of treatment (ACT) as costly which requires a lot of money.

https://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2007/10/02/99564.html