The Wa Municipal Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is set to begin the fourth round of the Seasonal Malaria Chemotherapy (SMC) aimed at preventing malaria in the municipality.
The fourth round of the SMC campaign will begin Monday, September 19 and run till Sunday, September 25, 2022, in the Wa Municipality.
The SMC is the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) recommended intervention to reduce the prevalence and deaths due to malaria in Africa.
It aimed to reduce the prevalence and deaths to about 90 per cent as malaria is the leading cause of sickness and death among children.
The Municipal Health Directorate, therefore, in collaboration with the National Malaria Control Program under the GHS, is embarking on the campaign as a preventive intervention against malaria by providing a full treatment course with antimalarial medicines for children aged 3 to 59 months.
Eligible children are said to receive three doses of the drugs for three consecutive days with two different doses depending on the age category of the child – that is, 3 to 11 months and 12 to 59 months.
The campaign will adopt a house-to-house strategy where trained Community Health Volunteers and some health staff would enter every house to administer the antimalarial medicine to the eligible children.
The Health Directorate appealed to mothers, parents, caregivers and guardians to comply and avail their children to receive the antimalarial doses.
It reported that the third round of the SMC in the Wa municipality achieved 99.8 per cent coverage which was above the national target of 90 per cent.
It, therefore, urged parents, caregivers and guardians to take advantage of the fourth and last round of the SMC for the year in order to protect their children against malaria.
It however advised that children who might miss the treatment during the stipulated period should be taken to the nearest health facility for the SMC drugs.