The Ministry of Health Wednesday launched the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) campaign as part of an intervention to reduce the malaria burden in Karamoja region.
Over years, Karamoja has had the worst malaria prevalence rate in the country, with over 34% of children under 5 years old testing positive.
As part of an initiative to aid the subregion, the Ministry implemented the SMC programme in six districts in the region including Amudat, Nabilatuk, Nakapiripit, Abim, Napak and Karenga.
According to the Health Ministry Permanent Secretary Dr. Diana Atwine, the exercise entailed giving a cocktail of antimalarials sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and amodiaquine to children aged three and five years. In this, a total of about 270,000 children benefited from the program.
She said over the period of implementation, the involvement and participation of the district health staff, district leadership, community leaders including Manyatta (homestead) leaders and leadership from NMCD played a key role in the success of the intervention.
“The Malaria Indicator Survey report for 2018/2019 put Karamoja in the spotlight for having the highest burden of Malaria in the country at 34%. This led to such unique interventions to complement existing strategies like Nets distribution, spraying, ICCM, IPT etc,” Dr. Atwine said.
“We thank the MPs and other political leaders from Karamoja, our techinical teams, Malaria Consortium, for the special efforts in this region. To our health workers and our VHTs, you are doing a great job as our points of health information and care in the communities,” she added.
Meanwhile, malaria remains Uganda’s leading cause of death, especially in children with over 90% of the population at risk. In 2020, WHO reported that there were an estimated 20,4 million malaria cases and over 30,900 estimated deaths in the country.
The disease causes immense detrimental health effects and is responsible for 30 to 50% of outpatient visits and 15 to 20% of hospital admissions.