14 Oct 2018

Ngami District Health Management Team (DHMT) will use different languages to promote Indoor Residual Spray (IRS) coverage of malaria.

The IRS fights the anopheles female mosquito which causes malaria and in the previous years, IRS spraying teams met challenges of lack of cooperation from people who refused to open their houses.

Principal health education technical officer, Ms Goganaone Setutu, said during a press conference that IRS coverage remained a challenge in the district as most of the communities were not cooperative during the campaign.

The annual campaign normally starts on October up to December and was aimed at tackling the malaria epidemic, saying using indigenous languages would be the best communication tool as the communities would easily understand the information and the importance of IRS. 

Ms Setutu said as part of their planned mobilisation activities towards malaria elimination, they had decided to conduct community conversations through sport tournaments, road shows with one of their brand mechanism written “Bula monyako” which translate as 'open the door’ which would be written in different languages used in the district.

The IRS exercise would target all the villages in the district except Maun and Phuduhudu villages. She said last year their schedule was affected by heavy rains and believed this year the IRS campaign would go smoothly and end on time.

She appealed to the public to get ready for the exercise which would be launched at Sehithwa and then rolled out to other areas in the district.

Malaria focal person, Dr Basiame Mathaio explained that prevention of malaria remained a priority with strategies aimed at vector control.

For the transmission period of 2016, he said the district achieved its target and experienced high cases of malaria in 2017 adding that this year they were on track to achieve the set 85 per cent target of eliminating malaria.

He said there were no deaths recorded this year as compared to last year where one death was registered. High numbers of cases in 2017, he said was influenced by heavy rains.

Dr Mathaio also started that most of the recorded cases were imported from areas of Okavango and neighbouring countries such as South Africa, Zambia and Namibia. ENDS