It’s another 25th of April and today marks World Malaria Day and
Malaria is still one of the major health problem in Nigeria. Malaria remains a
major public health issue with one third of the global population at risk of
infection. In Nigeria, it accounts for more cases and death than any country in
the world as 97 percent of the population is at risk of having it. One of the
major reasons Malaria is still a big issue on this side of the world is the
misuse of anti-malaria drugs, during a public presentation of the results of a
survey titled “survey on the quality of antimalarial medicines in Nigeria 2014”
by the then Director General of NAFDAC Paul Orhii, he stated that “malaria
remains a huge health threat to countries in sub-Sahara Africa including
Nigeria, abuse of antimalarial drugs makes one develop resistanthe strains of
malaria that maybe difficult to treat even with the right medicines”.
Resistance to antimalarial drugs in patients is becoming a contemporary public
health problem in Nigeria, most medical practitioners complain of how most
patients that visit them have taken one antimalarial drug or the other without
necessarily confirming if the have malaria or not and they only come to the
hospital when the symptoms persist or there is a relapse.Some symptoms that are
widely used as indicators for malaria are fever, headache and tiredness are not
significantly associated with malaria.The need to improve access to diagnosis
of malaria should be explored to ensure that clients that patronise retail drug
stores are tested before being sold antimalarial drugs. Without prior testing,
malaria is likely to be over treated and sometimes it might not even be malaria
as there are other illnesses that have symptoms similar to that of malaria and
without necessary diagnosis such cases can not be confirmed.
In 2009, the WHO recommended parasitology cake confirmation for all suspected
cases of malaria before treatment. This recommendation was implemented by the
National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP) of the Federal Ministry of Health
with the activation of Malaria Diagnosis and Treatment Policy and the Malaria
Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines. The policy is more operational in public
health facilities and some private health facilities. Some of the consequences
of presumptive use of antimalarial could delay intervention in non-malarial
febrile illness as patients may not receive the appropriate treatment for their
condition which could be very dangerous as the condition could worsen also,
resistance to antimalarial drugs is very dangerous because when such person is
actually infected with malaria, the antimalarial drug given might not be
effective.
In Nigeria the current regulatory policy on patent and propriety medicine
vendors (PPMV) does not permit them perform minimal invasive procedure which
include performance of malaria test that requires finger picking to collect
blood, if this could be lifted the prevalence rate of misuse of antimalarial
drugs would reduce as most people are customers to these over-the-counter
counter drug vendors. Continuous sensitization of the populace is also needed
especially for people in the rural areas where these patent medicine vendors
are mostly found on the dangers of antimalarial drug misuse. The PPMV as a body
should also be given appropriate drug education so they can be aware of the
effect of their action on their clients and be visited unannounced to ensure
they comply with what they have been told.
With all these being said always look out for the scratch code on the pack of
the drugs you buy and ensure you scratch it and send the code to the
appropriate number to save ourselves from being victims of fake drugs.
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