Jane Ruth Aceng the Minister of Health has called upon key government agencies, development partners, civil society organizations, and religious leaders to mobilize the general public to register, pick up and use mosquito nets as this will help to reduce the burden of malaria in the country.
According to Aceng, the distribution and proper use of Long Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets (LLINs) is one of the most effective ways of preventing malaria.
“Mosquito nets use can reduce the number of uncomplicated malaria episodes in areas of high malaria transmission by a half and also has an even bigger impact in areas of medium or lower transmission” Aceng explained.
“The use of mosquito nets has shown to reduce childhood mortality by up to a quarter, and for this reason, the Health Ministry has adopted the policy that all public hospital distribution of mosquito nets should be of LLINs rather than other conventional nets” she added.
Aceng made these remarks while addressing Journalists on the update of the national mosquito net distribution campaign and malaria epidemic at the Ministry headquarters in Kampala on Tuesday.
This year, the government with support from Global Fund and Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) is distributing 28.5 million nets to over 40 districts across the country with the overall aim of reducing malaria and mortality through achieving universal coverage with LLINs.
In this campaign dubbed “Under the net” the Ministry will distribute one mosquito net per every two persons in a household and it will also focus more on behavior change to achieve net use, care, and tackling the social norms that bar utilization.
The campaign that started in May under wave 1 is expected to be concluded in August with wave 3 in the districts of Masaka, Dokolo, Kalungu, Kyotera, Buduuda, Lwengo Mbale, and Nakaseke.
In this briefing, the government also noted that the Malaria epidemic has gone down from 73 districts in October last year to now 12 districts that are currently above the threshold.
This distribution of mosquito nets is part of the Uganda Malaria Reduction Strategy Plan that is geared towards a malaria-free Uganda to enable social-economic transformation in alignment with Uganda’s Vision 2040.
Since 2010 the government has been distributing mosquito nets in several districts of Uganda and a total of over 83 million nets have been distributed amongst the members of the public.
