By Andrew Magombo
Lilongwe, Mana: In a bid to help Malawi Government achieve eradication of Malaria by the year 2030, World Vision Malawi (WVM) has protected 2 million Malawians from the disease through the Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) campaign since 2019.
This was revealed recently in Lilongwe during an advocacy meeting between the Non-governmental organization and Members of Parliament from the Health, Budget, and Social Services committees to lobby for support.
With funding from Global Fund , in 2019 WMV embarked on spraying long lasting insecticides in over 500 thousand household across Balaka, Mangochi and Nkhatabay districts which rank highly with malaria cases.
Speaking in an interview with Malawi News Agency, Charles Chimombo who is the Director of Programmes at World Vision said the campaign has achieved overwhelming success despite pockets of resistance from some households citing faith-based reasons.
“Legislators in targeted districts should help in community mobilization of the campaign because we cannot talk of national development while malaria continues to claim six people daily.”
“Out of the targeted 539,487 households, we achieved a 96 percent success rate which has also helped decrease cases of absenteeism in school due to malaria hence we can achieve more than this if we work together,” said Chimombo.
Chairperson of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Dr Mathews Ngwal, said eradication of Malaria has more positive bearings as the country will no longer waste billions of Kwacha every year to control and prevent malaria.
“The Ministry of Health’s budget is barely adequate because apart from planned expenditure, there are other issues like accidents and public disasters so if we can deal with malaria it means that there will be rechanneling of funds to other important sectors.”
One beneficiary, a Gladys Kennedy, applauded the initiative saying she no longer spends more time at the hospital either to seek her treatment or take care of a relative as the spraying wiped out mosquitos in her household.
She said: “These days I have more time to focus on productive engagements because we no longer get Malaria and more importantly my children learn without being interrupted by sickness,”
Over 43 thousand pregnant women and 326,744 children below five years of age in the three targeted districts are key household beneficiaries who have been protected from malaria since the campaign started.
A principal recipient of Global Fund with over $33 million, World Vision Malawi has recruited over 5000 seasonal workers in the initiative which has reached out to over 93 percent of households in the three targeted districts.
