Southern Highlands receives mosquito nets

SOUTHERN Highlands has received 18 containers of treated mosquitos nets from Rotary Against Malaria.
This is the third time that Rotary Against Malaria, which is sponsored by Global Fund, has distributed mosquitoe nets to people in the province. The first was in 2013 and then in 2016.
The containers are currently in Mendi with 240,000 nets which will be distributed to four districts.
Imbonggu is too cold for mosquitoes and and will not get nets.
One of the team leaders, Helmut Magino, said the mosquito nets will be shared according to the population distribution.
Magino said that health workers in the districts would help carry out awareness and distribute the nets to the people.
He said cooler places like most parts of Imbongu would not be included in the distribution because they are too cold for mosquitoes.
“We start the distribution for SHP and Hela in 2013 at a three years’ intervals and this is our third round of the net distributions after the last one in 2016,” he said.
Michael Mombu, from the Provincial Health Authority, thanked Rotary Against Malaria and Global Fund for the mosquito nets.
He said the nets arrived at a time when they were in the middle of round 4 of the polio vaccination exercise in the province.
He said that districts would integrate net distributions with their polio vaccination schedules.
“We will give out nets to the people and give polio vaccinations to children under 15 years of age at the same time,” he said.
He said nets would be flown to remote areas with the polio teams for distributions.
Sr Jane Ongol, from Nipa Health Centre, said that malaria cases in the district declined six years ago when mosquito nets became available.
“At our outpatients ward, we witnessed malaria cases dropped drastically over the years since Rotary Against Malaria started distributing treated mosquito nets to the people,” she said.
Sr Ongol said that treated mosquito nets greatly helped people from catching malaria.