The National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) said it was working towards reducing malaria burden in the country by 13 per cent in 2023.
Coordinator of the programme, Dr. Audu Mohammed, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, yesterday, that Nigeria currently accounts for 25 per cent of global malaria burden.
He said the Roll-Back-Malaria programme, which was launched in 2000 in Abuja, helped to reduce malaria burden, noting that globally, malaria was enormous, claiming one million lives in a year.
“But with the help of government, development partners and donor agencies, the burden has reduced,” he said. “It has reduced to almost half from one million to 440,000 through the efforts of government and development partners, using new tools in terms of prevention, treatment and creation of awareness.This is really an achievement because if nothing is done, we will be recording over one million deaths.’’
Mohammed said that from 2000 till 2014, investment on malaria was enormous but because of global economic recession, including in Nigeria, it had reduced.
“The first was donor fatigue, as substantial part of malaria funding came from donor support. We used to get 600 million dollars for malaria reduction interventions but that reduced to 330 million dollars from 2018 to 2020.”
He said it was not only Nigeria that experienced drop in funding of malaria activities.