Angela Onwuzoo
A Consultant Paediatrician, Nephrology Division at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Katsina, Dr. Abdurrazzaq Alege, has urged parents to protect their children against mosquito bites as the rainy season sets in.
According to the physician, parents must be prepared for the rainy season by clearing bushes, drainages, and canals around them.
Alege, who disclosed this during an interview with Reportr Door Healthwise, said preparing for the rainy season helps to reduce mosquito bite and malaria cases, especially among children under the age of five years.
The paediatrician stated that people should not wait until the rainy season starts before making adequate preparation for it, stressing that hospital admission of children under-five with malaria was always higher in the rainy season.
He said, “There are simple approaches parents could adopt to prevent their children from coming down with malaria.
“There is supposed to be preparation for the rainy season and it is not when the rain starts that people will remember how to protect themselves against mosquito bites.
“What people are supposed to do as we approach the rainy season is to clear the bushes, drainages, and gutters around them so that once the rain starts, there won’t be stagnation of water from canals.
“There is supposed to be preparation for the rainy season. When the rain starts fully, sometimes, we witness over 30 admissions of children with malaria every day and the most common among them are mostly children under-five.
“Malaria that will require hospital admission is what we called severe malaria and it is typically found in children that are less than five years old. “
According to Dr. Alege, all the windows and doors in the house should be netted.
“We should ensure that the drainages are not blocked and where there are no drainages, we try to construct them. Otherwise, wherever there is stagnation of the pool of water, it will also attract mosquitoes.”
“When parents find out that the nets on the doors and windows are torn, they should repair them before the rainy season begins.
“If they don’t have netted doors, then the main door should be closed especially from 4:pm upwards because that is when mosquitoes come out.
“Wherever there is stagnation of the pool of water, it will always attract mosquitoes,” he said.
Explaining the importance of children sleeping under mosquito nets, the child specialist said every child must stay under mosquito nets when they are sleeping, stressing that there is a difference between staying under mosquito nets and sleeping under mosquito nets.
He added, “In the first place, some children would have slept off in the sitting room from about 6:pm. Then later, their parents will take them to the bedroom or their sleeping room.
“So, if they are sleeping in the sitting room from 6:pm, they should be under a mosquito net. It is not until they get to the bedroom or their sleeping room before going inside the net.
“This is very important. A mosquito net is one of the effective methods of malaria prevention. It has fewer complications than other methods.”
Alege also suggested the use of indoor residual spraying as another malaria prevention measure. The measure, he said, should be deployed in the rainy season to guard against mosquito bites.
He also urged parents to, “Avoid pouring water in kitchen utensils and leaving them open. They breed mosquitoes.
“Toilet doors should always be closed because toilets breed mosquitoes.”
The paediatrician counselled that any child that had symptoms of malaria such as fever should be given paracetamol and should be taken to the hospital.
He added, “Once these are done, we will be able to reduce the incidence of malaria during the rainy season.”
According to the World Health Organisation, malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.
The WHO estimates that between 2000 and 2015 the rate of new malaria cases declined by 37 per cent globally, adding that malaria deaths fell by 60 per cent, with 6.2 million lives saved.
It noted that three-quarters of those gains could be attributed to interventions such as insecticide-treated bed nets.
In its 2021 malaria report, the WHO says in 2020, there were estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide, noting that the estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 627,000 in 2020.
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