A medical expert, Prof. Olugbenga Mokuolu, has called for improvement in Nigeria’s malaria data to reflect a realistic figure of the disease.

Mokuolu, Co-Chair of Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Case Management Working Group, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos in commemoration of World Malaria Day.

World Malaria Day, celebrated annually on April 25, highlights global efforts to end malaria, the need for sustained political commitment, and continued investment in malaria control and elimination.

The theme for this year’s celebration is “Accelerating the fight against malaria for a more equitable world.”

Mokuolu also emphasised the need to strengthen the culture of diagnostic testing before the treatment of malaria to document true cases.

“In a situation where we continue to practice empirical treatment for all fever, we are going to create a false record that exaggerates the number of malaria cases.

“If 10 people come in with fever, there’s a tendency for a health worker who didn’t conduct a test on the patient to diagnose seven for malaria, and that’s what the record would reflect.

“But if you test, you will be surprised that maybe two or a maximum four out of the 10 test positive for malaria,” he said.

Mokuolu, who is the Special Adviser to the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare on Malaria, noted that more in-country information had been gathered due to the entomological monitoring that was set up.

“Now better data is emerging and helping us understand vector bionomic that’s overall behaviour around the vector.

”With such understanding, we can better target our interventions to where it will make the most impact,” he said.

According to him, efforts are being made to optimise and recalibrate existing tools and adopt new tools in terms of technical and strategic approaches.

He said that integrating a multisectoral approach in the malaria response had become crucial to achieving an impactful intervention.

“Multisectoral approach has become critical in our response – the Ministry of Agriculture has as much stake as the Ministry of Health; the Ministry of Environment is as critical as any drug we will use to treat malaria,” he said.

Mokuolu stressed that malaria had exerted a lot of toll on people, acknowledging that several efforts had been made to control it.

He, however, said malaria had continued to endanger health and impose high costs on national economies where it was prevalent.

“It’s a disease that has perpetrated the vicious cycle of inequality, impacting children under five, pregnant women, refugees, and internally displaced persons.

“We must be deliberate to ensure these vulnerable populations are reached and covered as an affirmation of their inclusion in our world,” he said.

According to him, primary healthcare centres are being strengthened across the country to prevent, detect and reduce the burden of the disease.

The professor lamented that budgetary allocation to malaria had been low at the federal and state levels,.

He called for an improvement in malaria funding to stimulate progress.

He disclosed that there were assurances from the federal government to improve the 2025 budget allocation for the fight against malaria.

Similarly, Prof. Wellington Oyibo, Consultant Medical Parasitologist, said that research done by his team across the country showed that primary source data on malaria at health facilities were not accurate.

Oyibo lamented that overdiagnosis and over-treatment of malaria were prevalent in health facilities nationwide, as all fevers are treated as malaria, with strong economic and life-threatening effects on patients and communities.

He said that training and supervision of healthcare workers were critical to
improve the quality of data analysed and reviewed for targeted interventions.