Over 300,000 households in Kisumu County have benefited from free, long-lasting insecticidal nets to control the spread of malaria in the area.
Kisumu County Malaria Control Coordinator Lyana Dayo said the county received 866,115 mosquito nets from the Ministry of Health (MoH) for the campaign to give impetus to the fight against the tropical disease.
So far, 92% of the targeted households, she said, have received the mosquito nets, adding that the recent floods affected the distribution exercise in parts of Nyando, Kadibo, and Nyakach Sub-Counties.
A number of the beneficiaries, she said, were displaced by the floods, with some of the facilities earmarked for the distribution exercise submerged in water.
Dayo said the exercise, which started with the registration of beneficiaries in January, has registered tremendous success despite the challenge.
“After the distribution of treated mosquito nets, our hospitals have registered a significant reduction in the number of people coming to seek malaria treatment,” she said.
The beneficiaries, she noted, were instructed to ensure the proper use of mosquito nets to decrease the malaria prevalence in the county from 27% in 2015 to 15.6%.
She pointed out that the county health department will continue to roll out interventions to ensure that the number of malaria cases drops.
Kisumu is one of the counties in Kenya with a high burden of malaria given its geographic and climatic conditions, which are characterized by low altitude and hot and humid weather, which create a conducive breeding ground for mosquitoes.
By Hussein Sauda
