Ogun Govt Partners Spanish Firm on Malaria Control
Sheriff Balogun Ogun state government has partnered a Spanish company, Inesfly, to control and eradicate the spread of malaria in the state.
While addressing journalists in Abeokuta, the state Health Commissioner, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka said “we are not just going to control malaria, we will definitely eliminate malaria. This is a complicated disease that is giving us difficult time to control let alone eliminate. But we won’t relent.”
He said: “We have undertaken the process of partnering them (the Spanish firm) so that they can help train our people and see that they develop our most appropriate capacity in this effort”.
The commissioner lamented that malaria had become a complicated disease which had proven difficult to end over the years. He therefore, said that the state government was ready to partner anybody or group willing to assist in the roll-back-malaria task.
He also noted that the company had expressed readiness to set up an anti-vector paint factory in Nigeria.
However, Chairman of the company, Dr. Pillar Mateo, said “Inesfly insecticide paint is safe and does not affect human and pest and all the ingredients are encapsulated” She disclosed that the technological paint product would eradicate vectors and insect-pests in homes and environment.
She added that the vaccination was done in a bio-rational way by releasing special Juvenile Hormone Analogue (JHA), thereby killing the insects to the larva and through all stages of development.
She, however, assured that the product had been approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Centre for Training and Medical Research in Spain, and the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
She said samples of the product would be made available to the state government immediately.
Malaria is one of the greatest killer diseases in Nigeria, claiming hundreds of thousands of under-five children and nursing mothers on a yearly basis. The federal government has for long been trying to tackle the disease through the Roll-back Malaria initiative and the widespread distribution of insecticide-treated nets. Efforts are still ongoing to tackle the scourge.