Malaria survey in 20 districts

Elizabeth Tsuro Midlands Reporter
THE government will next week roll out the National Malaria Indicator Survey in 20 districts to assess prevalence of the disease in the country. The survey is expected to help the government prepare a malaria control plan to be used until the year 2020. The government has availed $1 million for the exercise.

Speaking at the training workshop in Gweru yesterday, the director of the Malaria Control Programme in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Joseph Mberikunashe, said:

“Supervisors and enumerators from different provinces have already started their training and all will be trained by next week Thursday, ahead of the survey.

“Other partners like World Health OrganiSation (WHO) and ZimStats are also coming in so that we conduct a national malaria indicator survey to assess malaria parasite prevalence in 20 selected districts. We’ll prepare a malaria control plan from this year up to 2020.”

The last malaria indicator survey was carried out in 2012 and since then the ministry had been controlling malaria prevalence in the most malaria infested areas such as Midlands, Matabeleland North and South provinces in Zimbabwe.

Mberikunashe also said the survey is targeting pregnant women and different age groups in selected households.

“The survey will use stratified sampling, and will be conducted on the peak period of malaria transmission so that it will become easier to estimate our burden. The survey will try to measure the extent of malaria knowledge among the populace and evaluate if there are barriers in trying to access treatment and services.”