From Emmanuel Iyoho
ABUJA
The Federal Government has urged citizens to seek assistance of trained environmental health practitioners on best ways of handling mosquitos and other animal disease vectors in the country.
Minister of environment, Mohammed Hassan Abdullahi, gave the charge during a ministerial press briefing on the commemoration of World Mosquito Day in Abuja recently.
According to him, “As a ministry, we remain committed to our mandate of Disease Pest and Vector Management in Nigeria. The Minister said government has entrenched sustainable programme focusing on eliminating or reducing breeding avenues for disease vectors.
Such avenues involve fostering collaboration with stakeholders including sub nationals, development partners; relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Civil Society organizations, Community Leaders etc.
He said: “As the ministry responsible for environmental health matters, we are working to strengthening our Administrative and technical structures in order to emplace a robust and comprehensive Vector Control Programme with special emphasis on Mosquito control.”
According to him, the strategies to be deployed would include Integrated Pest and Vector Management as outlined in the National Environmental Sanitation Policy, 2005.
“Our roles on Integrated Vector Management as identified in the National Malaria Strategic Plan 20142022 will be played expeditiously and as diligently as possible in order to deliver Pay on our mandate,” said he.
On tackling the scourge, the minister maintained that there was need for improved personal hygiene and environmental sanitation’ saying it remain the best preventive measures of Malaria .
“I urge individual, family and community members to imbibe the following preventive measures keep waste materials and junks away from village squares, huts, rooms etc; insect proof their rooms by using wire mesh to reduce mosquito entry into living and bedrooms; make sure that they do not keep derelict or disused materials in and around dwellings and regular cleaning and removal of waste and junk materials.” Abdullahi added.
On his part, minister of health, Dr. Osagle Ehanire, said the Federal Ministry of Health placed a strong importance on interventions that would limit the vector-human contact towards protecting our people from these diseases.
Osagle Ehanire who was represented by the National Coordinator’ Malaria elimination programme, Dr Perpetual Uhomoibhi described ubiquitous mosquito as an important vector of some of the world’s deadliest pathogens that causes diseases of major public health importance such as malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Zika virus, Chikungunya virus, West Nile virus, amongst others.
According to him, over thirty Anopheles species of mosquitoes have been reported across the five geo-ecological zones in Nigeria. “This is apart from the Aedes and Culicine species of mosquitoes.”Ehanire said.
He said the federal ministry of health, in recognition of the importance of this critical vector and the diseases it transmits, established the Integrated Vector Management Branch within the National Malaria Elimination Programme towards coordinating all efforts to mitigate the Impact of these diseases.
“The ministry of health remains committed to the health and well being of Nigerians and will continue to strive towards a malaria-free Nigeria using a multi-pronged and multi-sectoralapproach to drive down the prevalence of the malaria and other vector borne diseases in Nigeria.”
He said the National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) in collaboration with partners had established 29 entomological surveillance sentinel sites across the country to monitor the vector behaviour/bionomics and insecticide resistance patterns across the different ecological zones of the country.
According to the minister, the Ministry of Health remains committed to the health and well being of Nigerians and will continue to strive towards a malaria-free Nigeria using a multi-pronged and multi-sectoral approach to drive down the prevalence of the malaria and other vector borne diseases in Nigeria.
While calling on the general public to support these malaria elimination efforts. Ehanire said a large part of the implicating factors rests on human behaviour and attitudinal change, adding that simple actions like keeping our immediate environment clean, ridding our surroundings of refuse and unwanted receptacles, screening out windows, doors and sleeping inside insecticide-treated bednets every night will go a long way in curbing the malaria menace as well as other mosquito-borne diseases.
August 20 is a day set aside for global commemoration of the discovery in 1897 that female Anopheles mosquitoes transmit malaria between humans. Since then, World Mosquito Day presents us with an opportunity to raise awareness of the dangers of malaria-carrying mosquitoes and shine a spotlight on ongoing efforts in the fight against the world’s deadliest creature.
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