MINISTRY of Health Permanent Secretary for Technical Services Kennedy Malama has said that the Government is working in collaboration with its partners in implementing and scaling up malaria interventions at all levels with the aim of placing the country on an elimination trajectory.
Dr Malama said the Ministry of Health has enhanced serious collaboration with its partners to ensure that malaria cases were quickly eliminated in all parts of the country.
He said that over the years, great efforts were made by the health sector and a good number of committed partners to increase coverage of key malaria interventions throughout the country.
He said all intervention programs were being conducted even in hard-to- reach communities to ensure people in those areas were not left out in such undertakings.
The Permanent Secretary said this at the 2021 National Malaria Indicator Survey Enumerators survey held at Mika Convention centre in Lusaka yesterday.
In a speech on his behalf by director quality assurance Dr Rosemary Mwanza, Dr Malama said the ministry made great strides and had since scored a lot of successes over the years.
‘’Malaria cases reduced from 374/1000 population in 2017 to 309/1000 in 2019 from 8.5 in 2017. However, in 2020, we witnessed an increase of 29.5 percent in malaria cases and this situation is worrying,’’ he said.
Dr. Malama added that the National Malaria Indicator Survey, will therefore, provide us with a great opportunity to measure the impact of our efforts in the past and strategies on the best way to address this disease.
He said the Malaria indicator survey was again being conducted with one main objective and that was to carry out a comprehensive evaluation using a National household survey to assess the community level availability of key malaria interventions.
He said another feature of the survey was the assessment on the status of malaria- related burden through anemia and parasite prevalence through testing the under-five-children.
‘’The Zambias sixth National Malaria indicator survey represented significant progress across nearly all key indicators including reductions in burden of malaria among households throughout the country.
‘’And that designed to increase coverage of malaria interventions, like insecticide treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying,’’ he said.
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