Dr Godfrey Magumba, the country director of the Malaria Consortium-Uganda, displays the African Excellence Award. PHOTO BY LILIAN NAMAGEMBE
A Malaria prevention and treatment project piloted in Tororo District has won the African excellence award, given to the outstanding campaigns and projects in the field of public relations and communication in Africa.
The project, masterminded by the Malaria Consortium-Uganda, a global NGO, committed to reducing the burden of malaria and other communicable diseases, was chosen for the change communication category award, at the ceremony held in Cape Town South Africa on April 21.
According to Dr Godfrey Magumba, the country director of the Malaria Consortium-Uganda, the Shs7.2bn (£1.5m) three year project funded by the Comic relief funds has been running in Tororo District since 2014.
Dr Magumba said, their focus was based on creating a culture of sleeping under insecticide treated mosquito nets every night and other malaria control behaviours such as seeking treatment within 24 hours of fever onset and testing before treatment.
“By 2009, malaria prevalence in Tororo was at 53 per cent but drastically reduced to 29-30 per cent in 2014 when the project was initiated.” He adds, the prevalence had gone down to 16 per cent by 2015, and is now at 8 per cent.
The project is basically promoted through mosquito net distribution among school going children, women on antenatal care and training health workers to encourage the use of mosquito nets in communities.
Dr Julian J. Atim, the project manager said the communication campaign has seen mosquito net use among children rise to 91.6 per cent in the second year of the project with a total of 147,000 nets distributed since the project initiation.
“In the first two years, we distributed 87,000 nets through schools, 20,000 through ANC and 40,000nets through both schools and ANC,” Dr Atim said.
The distribution of nets through schools, Dr Atim said, helps to keep children in school and reduce the dropout rate.
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