Don’t abuse use of treated mosquito nets — Dr Vanotoo
Some beneficiaries of treated mosquito nets distributed free of charge by the Ministry of Health (MoH) are abusing the usage of the nets, the Greater Accra Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Linda Vanotoo, has said.
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According to Dr Vanotoo, some of the beneficiaries use the nets to fence their backyard gardens and as table covers instead of sleeping under them to prevent mosquito bites.
She made the disclosure at a medical outreach programme organised by the Complete Renewed Equipped Women (CREW), the women’s wing of the Living Streams International, a non-denominational charismatic church at La in Accra last Saturday.
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The members of CREW screened some residents of La for breast cancer, malaria, blood pressure, blood sugar level and other ailments.
As part of the programme, the CREW registered 100 people in the community with the National Health Insurance Scheme free of charge.
The membership of CREW comprises doctors, nurses, pharmacists, lab technicians and other healthcare practitioners.
Dr Vanotoo said others also gave the nets to their children for use as goalpost nets and added that the development undermined the efforts of the government and its development partners to reduce malaria to the barest minimum.
She, therefore, advised the public against abusing the nets and asked them to desist from using them for fishing, caging poultry, fencing vegetable gardens and tree seedlings.
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She also appealed to stakeholders to be at the forefront of public education on the proper use of the nets to reduce malaria cases.
Progress
Meanwhile, statistics by the Ghana Health Service had revealed a remarkable reduction in malaria cases in terms of the prevalence rate in the country.
Ghana, which was in a hyper-transmission area, has witnessed a major decline in malaria cases and deaths.
Under five malaria death cases dropped from 14.4 per cent in 2000 to 0.32 per cent in 2016.
Even though suspected malaria cases increased by 6.9 per cent in 2016 as compared with the previous year, admission and deaths attributed to the disease, however, decreased by 6.3 per cent in 2015 and 24.6 per cent in 2016.
CREW President
Earlier, in a welcome address, the President of CREW, Dr Davina Markei, said the medical outreach programme was in line with the church’s vision to make people the centre of its work.
She said 5000 people in the Tse-Addo community in La would benefit from the programme this year.