Governor Charles Soludo’s administration has expressed concern over the failure of Anambra residents’ refusal to sleep under insecticide-treated mosquito nets, despite distributing 3.8 million of the nets.
Health commissioner Afam Obidike said the government was not happy with the development.
“As a government, we are not happy with the low percentage of people who, after collecting the nets, had yet to commence sleeping inside them,” Mr Obidike said.
The commissioner made the remarks during debriefing and submission of a final report on the exercise to the state government by the Malaria Consortium on Tuesday in Awka.
Malaria Consortium, an NGO, distributed more than 3.8 million insecticide-treated nets across Anambra’s 21 local government areas to tackle the malaria scourge.
The distribution was done in partnership with the Anambra government and the National Malaria Elimination Programme, funded by Givewell Open Philanthropic Foundation.
He said using the nets would reduce the death of infants, pregnant women and other people with weak immunity and reduce the loss of man-hour due to malaria and related diseases.
Laitan Adeniyi, campaign manager for Malaria Consortium in Anambra, said 3. 85 million ITNs were distributed to 7.43 million residents on a door-to-door basis.
She added that 8,503 personnel were engaged and trained across the 21 councils for the ITN distribution.
