मलेरिया नियंत्रण एवं उन्मूलन

While the Millennium Development Goal 6 has concentrated on malaria elimination strategies with some degree of success, reflected in falling morbidity and mortality over the past 15 years, the situation in Africa is not as promising as the rest of the world. We wondered how effective the message to use insecticide-treated mosquito nets was and with this in mind, in September 2016, we undertook a survey of highly-trained doctors from Nigeria and Ghana, attending Millennium Development Goal 6 postgraduate training courses in Ibadan and Accra to assess whether they practiced antimalarial personal protection policies themselves. Surprisingly, over 40% of the doctors in the Accra survey did not even own a mosquito net with 20% in Ibadan. Only 7% of those in Ghana used their nets daily, rising to 20% in the Nigerian respondents. We conclude that further public health measures are needed to bring home the message that mosquito nets should be used on a daily basis in endemic areas and that no section of society is exempt.