A campaign to boost the use of impregnated bed nets to combat malaria was launched on 13 June in the Republic of Congo, where the disease is responsible for almost a quarter of all deaths of children under five.
“The programme will help reduce malaria morbidity and mortality,” said Olivier Diby, of Global Business Consulting, one of the private sector partners in the campaign run by the Congolese government, the World Health Organization and the UN Children’s Fund. Other partners include the MTN Foundation and Bayer Environmental Science.
In October 2007 Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso announced that antimalarial treatment would be provided free of charge for children up to the age of five and for pregnant women.
Under the campaign bed nets will be impregnated or re-impregnated at designated sites or in people’s homes.
In Congo, malaria is the cause of half the cases of hospitalisation of children under five and 17 percent of underweight newborns, according to government sources.
The disease kills over 21,000 children every year in Congo. According to a study conducted in 2005, 76 percent of the population did not sleep under impregnated nets.
In 2007 the Japanese government gave Congo more than 300,000 impregnated nets.
ai/am/cb
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
