The government has been urged to adopt the use of indoor residual spraying in malaria endemic counties to curb the spread of the disease.
Siaya County Executive Committee Member for Health, Dismas Wakla said that the disease, which accounts for 70 per cent of hospital visits in the county was a burden that requires a multi-pronged approach to contain.
He was speaking at the Boro divisional headquarters in Siaya County during the launch of the countywide distribution of the long lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets.
Wakla said the use of indoor residual spraying have proved successful in Migori and Homa Bay Counties which, though found within the lake region, had recorded low levels of Malaria after the intervention.
“I know our neighbours, Migori and Homa Bay, have tremendously improved because there was a very impactful intervention that was carried out there which was spraying on the entire counties,” he said.
The CEC called on the national government, through the Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Programme to consider initiating the indoor spraying in Siaya and the neighbouring Busia Counties that he said were still recording high number of malaria.
Wakla however called on the locals to use mosquito nets to keep the disease at bay as they wait for the other intervention.
National Malaria Programme’s Manager in charge of care and treatment, Dr. Omar Ahmeddin said that Siaya County will receive over 400,000 mosquito nets for distribution to the locals.
Omar said that the distribution of the nets was funded by international donors, among them the Global Fund and the United States of America’s President’s Malaria Initiative which he hailed for the assistance.
By Philip Onyango
