Katsina — About 500,000 children in four local government areas of Katsina State have undergone the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) initiative aimed at addressing the scourge of malaria.
The local governments areas are Mashi, Baure, Dutsi and Maiadua. SMC was adopted to combat malaria in the Sahelian states of Nigeria where about 11 million children are believed to be at risk of malaria.
The project involves the intermittent administration of full doses of malaria vaccines to children between 3-59 months of age.
The state's Director of Malaria and Sickle Cell disease Control,
Dr Shamsudeen Yahaya, who was speaking at the end of project dissemination of SMC, said that prior to the initiative Katsina was among the states with high burden of the disease, leading to high morbidity and mortality, adding that a recent study has shown that the intervention has drastically reduced death from malaria in children.
He called for concerted efforts towards sustaining the achievement recorded so far and equally stressed the need for extension to other local government areas.
In a related development, About 203 children have so far died in the last 44 weeks from measles in Katsina, Dr. Umole Elfrida has said.
Speaking at a one day sensitization meeting for stakeholders ahead of the nationwide measles campaign next week, Umole said the deaths is out of the total 2,781 measles cases reported across the state.
According to her, this calls for concerted efforts towards ensuring that the vulnerable children are immunized to build immunity, noting that these figures ranked the state as the highest in the country.
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