By Ewoenam Kpodo
Aflao (VR), April 19, GNA – A total of 143,764 Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) have been distributed to 55,429 households (representing 75.68 percent) across Ketu South Municipality in the nationwide campaign to control malaria.
The distributed number represents 97.63 percent of the total 147,250 pieces of ITNs received from the national level for the municipality.
The point mass distribution of the ITNs from April 11 to 17 followed registrations of households from February 29 to March 04, which saw identifiable registration assistants visit homes, villages, and communities in the Municipality to register households within the five-day period to make them eligible to receive the nets.
During the distribution period, personnel from the Ketu South Health Directorate went round every community to announce the designated distribution point and invited household heads or members to visit and present any of the beneficiary details for redemption of the nets.
The point mass distribution, a revised campaign strategy by the Ghana Health Service and its partners to get treated bed nets into households, used the universal coverage principle (one net for two persons in a household).
Mr Philemon Ametorwodufia, Malaria Focal Person, Ketu South explained to Ghana News Agency in an interview that an electronic app (Ghana Malaria Intervention System) was used to collect information including name of household head and number of people in the household noting, the app was configured to cap the number of nets to be received by a household at five.
He appealed to beneficiaries to sleep under the bed nets and not use them for other purposes including as fence for their gardens saying, that would defeat the purpose for which the ITNs were distributed.
“This intervention is aimed at reining in the disease in Ketu South, Volta, and Ghana as a whole. And the only way this is possible is when we sleep under the nets at night to prevent mosquito bites.
As a Municipality, we were recording a significant reduction in the past years and a progress in controlling the disease. Unfortunately, uncomplicated malaria was the leading cause of morbidity and the first among the top 10 out-patient department attendance in the municipality for last year. This was partly due to the flooding situation we experienced.”
Mr Ametorwodufia advised residents to cover clean water containers, dry out all stagnant waters around households as well as clear bushes and all materials that could
become breeding sites for the malaria-transmitting mosquitoes (female anopheles mosquitoes) to eliminate the disease.
GNA