12 Oct 2014

The District Health Management Team (DHMT) officer for Tutume health post has urged residents of Makuta in Nkange constituency to open their home to health workers for the Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) campaign program.

Speaking at the launch of IRS programme on Wednesday, October 8 in Makuta, the nursing superintendent, Ms Dineo Sisila said IRS is a key component of the national malaria prevention programme which is geared towards reducing the malaria transmission at household level.

She highlighted that Tutume sub-district is classified as a malaria endemic area together with the districts of Chobe, Ngami, Okavango and Boteti, noting that the country is stratified into three epidemiological zones and these areas fall under this critical zone because of the high number of cases registered annually.

She therefore added that because of this, the Ministry of Health (MOH) took a decision to take the national malaria program initiative to introduce and implement the indoor residual spraying in these districts with the prime purpose of mitigating the number of malaria cases.

She further mentioned that it has been almost over a decade since Tutume started the implementation of IRS and the district has been accomplishing inconsistent results with the results ranging between 70 and 80 per cent below the national threshold of 90 per cent.

She, however said these results are attributed to various challenges that include inadequate resources and the rejection of the programme by the general community. 

For the past five years, she said their results have been erratic and last season their achievement was relatively low standing at 67 per cent and the district experienced an upward spiral of cases. For the first time in a decade, she said they registered 25 clinically confirmed cases of which two deaths were registered.

She, nonetheless said there have been substantial accomplishments since the inception of the programme  with the country experiencing a downward spiral of cases since 2000 which has seen some renowned endemic areas elevated to a non-endemic area among them Masunga in the North East District.

The results, Ms Sisila explained, have precipitated a decision at the African Malaria Convention where a decision was taken to earmark Botswana for elimination by 2015 together with neighboring countries of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.

This, she also said has prompted the national malaria programme  through MOH to double their efforts to attain the zero transmission of malaria by 2015. ENDS