The minister for health in Eastern Equatoria State on Monday cautioned citizens against diverting mosquito nets to other uses and urged them to use them to fight malaria which is a killer disease.
Minister Lodae Pasqual Loyakori was on Monday speaking during the commemoration of International Malaria Day at Airport View Nursery and Primary School in Torit and said malaria is responsible for the death of millions of people across the globe.
Due to inadequate information, some locals use mosquito nets for fishing, roofing huts, harvesting white ants, and fencing vegetable gardens among others.
The health minister said the government is working hard with other partners to ensure malaria is eradicated but that this requires community participation and engagement.
“The work ahead is too much and requires a lot of extra efforts and community commitment in changing behavior towards the way we will handle the process of eradicating malaria,” Minister Loyakori said. “We want people to sleep under mosquito nets but some people do not listen and because of this, we cannot chase malaria away. I know that some other communities in very far remote areas do not have access to such information or facilities but some do not just listen.”
He said some people and communities use mosquito nets for fencing, storing sorghum, sieving local brew, and other uses and that this must stop. He also appealed to partners in the health sector to help the government in ensuring that every household sleeps under mosquito nets.
Momodou Barrow, of WHO’s Torit field office who represented the UN at the occasion, said the goal of the day was to gather efforts to combat malaria and that global partners have injected lots of funds to fight Malaria yet the disease still continues.
“This year’s theme is that we have to do it together because we always say health care services are not completely owned by health workers but is a collective responsibility between the health workers and the community. If the community does not take part in the health services, then we are not going to achieve our goal,” Barrow said.
“Malaria, as we all know, is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in a lot of people, especially children, even the elderly. It can impact and also lead to death if not treated early,” he added.
Jenifer Iholong, a mother to four who attended the event said it is good to seek early treatment from the hospital to ascertain the real disease affecting an individual.
“The message that I got is good, the issue of seeking early treatment. I have known that malaria comes from mosquitoes and these mosquitoes,” she said. “My message now is that people should clean their homes to avoid the grass that harbors mosquitoes.”
The state marked the day under the theme “Together let us end malaria in South Sudan”.