WHO Releases Nigeria’s Malaria Report
The 2022 Nigeria Malaria Report, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), showed that malaria mortality in Nigeria decreased by 55%.
According to the research, Nigeria is responsible for around 27% of all malaria cases worldwide, but it has made significant strides.
The incidence of malaria has decreased by 26% since 2000, from 413 per 1000 to 302 per 1000 in 2021, while malaria deaths have decreased by 55%, from 2.1 per 1000 people to 0.9 per 1000 people.
Dr Moeti Matshidiso, WHO Regional Director for Africa, stated during the virtual launch yesterday that Nigeria has made significant progress in enhancing the health of its people.
According to Matshidiso, between 2015 and 2021, the nation achieved strides in the fight against HIV, achieving two of the 95-95-95 targets, and tuberculosis intervention coverage is improving, with rising case detection.
The size of Nigeria's population, which made scaling up intervention difficult, subpar surveillance systems, which only detected less than 40% of the country's malaria data, insufficient funding to ensure universal interventions across all states, and people's preference for the private sector, which is subject to little regulation, are some of the main factors contributing to the persistence of the malaria disease burden, according to her analysis.
Matshidiso pointed out that the Report on Malaria in Nigeria 2022 was a great example of how to use data to target and prioritize health interventions, as well as to optimize resource allocation and make it easier to monitor performance at the federal and state levels.
She claims that the report offers vital details on the state of malaria in each of Nigeria's 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory, making it special in that it offers data at the State level to direct a truly subnational response to the disease. It also gives an overview of the malaria situation in all States, focusing on population demographics, malaria interventions, climate, and disease burden.
