The government in conjunction with partners has rolled out a campaign to reign on malaria and ensure that school going children are protected and treated against the disease.
A non-governmental organization christened Maisha Meds has partnered with among others the Ministry of Education to champion the campaign to be piloted in five schools in Kisumu County.
Speaking during the launch of the campaign at Nyakach Girls High school Mrs. Ruth Namayi who is the Programmes Officer at Maisha Meds revealed that the programme targets to eliminate malaria whose prevalence has been noted as alarming in Kisumu County.
“Maisha Med envisions to provide products for malaria testing kits and anti-malarial drugs to schools and they are working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education to provide test kits to schools for we all know that Kisumu County is a malaria endemic zone.
We have selected five schools to roll out the programme where we will be collaborating with the Ministry of Health in malaria case management and we will run the pilot for a period of six months and afterwards we will make a decision based on the impact on how we will scale within Kisumu County and beyond and to how many facilities,” said Namayi
A health expert at Meds Mrs. Grace Jobita disclosed that the programme targets over 15000 learners with plans to commission the programme in Kisumu County within six months even as she called on strengthened partnership between the county and the national government in spearheading medical services.
“When we started the programme, Maisha Med had to have a meeting with the regional Director of Education and it’s the Ministry of Education that decided on the five schools including Kisumu Girls, Kisumu Boys, Ahero Girls, Onjiko Boys and Nyakach Girls.
The Ministry of Health at the county level and the Ministry of Education will monitor the health base within the secondary schools. We are targeting about 150,000 students who will be reached within the pilot phase which is six months but we believe we will go beyond Kisumu County,” said Jobita.
The area County Director of Education Mr. Jacktone Nyangre hailed the initiative that he noted would help save time for the learners that would have been spent in search of medication even as he pledged that the ministry of Education would wholly support the programme.
“I am sure this will be beneficial to our learners as a lot of time that would have been wasted going to far off facilities for testing can now be done in school. This is going to be very useful to us and we want to believe that after this, when they do this survey, they will be able to extend to more schools,” pointed Nyangre.
By Milton Onyango
