By Ibrahim Sorie Koroma,
Senior Health Education Officer –HEP/MoH
The Ministry of Health in collaboration with its partners on Thursday 22nd February will embark on FREE distribution of insecticide treated mosquito nets campaign in 15 districts, excluding Bo District. Bo is not included in this distribution exercise because the campaign was first launched with a pilot in Bo in November 2023 in which lessons learnt have been reviewed and addressed to improve the roll-out or implementation phase in the 15 districts.
Proper utilization of Insecticide Treated Mosquito Nets (ITNs) at household and community level still remains one of the most cost effective preventive measures utilized against malaria to reduce the burden, morbidity and death of the disease. As a result, the Ministry of Health with support from its partners periodically distribute free ITN to households after every 3 years, as one of the doable elimination strategies to slow down the prevalence of malaria in the country. The last ITNs distribution was done in June, 2020.
“This year’s ITNs distribution campaign is organized in 2 phases; the first phase is the registration process which ended 10th February. He continued …the second phase which is the distribution of bed nets (ITNs) is scheduled to start 22nd February and ends 28th February 2024.” Said Dr. Mac-Falama.
The National Malaria Control Programme Manager confirmed that this year’s ITNs campaign is a novelty as for the first time registration of households is done digitally, moving away from the old-aged analogue/pepper based registration of households. The Programme Manager reiterated that the system cannot be breached as it will also be utilized for the distribution of the bed net using data from the household registration and that information on the voucher will be scanned to verify the information of households and the number of nets to be claimed as per number of people per household. He continued that the system was tested during the pilot in Bo and has been proven to be effective.
“The use of ITNs is not the only preventive measures we are promoting, there a whole lots of other high impact malaria lifesaving preventive interventions, including Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS), administration of Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Pregnancy (IPTp) and Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Infants (IPTi) as well as regular environmental cleaning, especial at communal level.” Dr. Mac-Falama Clarified.
He further revealed that because of the substantial control investments and measures put in place in Sierra Leone so far to combat Malaria by the MoH with support from partners, the country has consequentially witnessed a steady decreased in the prevalence of malaria from 43% in 2016 to 22% in 2022.
The Malaria Programme Manager has warned the public against misuse of the ITNs as it should not be used for any other purpose but to always sleep inside the mosquito every nights nets to prevent the bit of infected mosquitoes to prevent malaria.
Talking on the communication strategy to educate the public on the campaign, Health Education Programme Manager – Harold Thomas said that they are using a multi-pronged or mixed communication strategy to reach everybody in the country, including mass media, community and stakeholders engagement and social media handles. Mr. Thomas also warned against splitting of household into many households as this will create room for other people not to get the net. He called on the public to go to the nearest clinic/ health for accurate information as negative rumours and misconceptions do not benefit anyone.
“To have harmonised and consistent messages, the MoH through the Health Education Programme, including Social and Behavioural Change partners, developed, pretested, consolidated and validated evidence based messages which informed the campaign communication materials, including jingles, printable and audio visual materials for effective education, communication, and promotion of the ITNs campaign” Said Harold Thomas, Health Education Programme Manager.