A Hospital Based Study Of Malaria
[IN NDIEGORO COMMUNITY, ABA SOUTH L.G.A. ABIA STATE]

6.3    Recommendation for reducing malaria burden
For effective control of malaria including prevention and treatment, the government at all levels should muster the political will to implement the existing tools towards the eradication of malaria. To achieve this, the following recommendations are made:
1.    Related studies to this research work should be sponsored within regions with special interest in rural communities. These will reveal the patterns of the diseases within an area and enable use of the most effective control measure, thus improving the health of the people.
2.    It has become increasingly appreciated that multi-sectorial approach to disease control is a better approach than mono- sectorial. It therefore becomes imperative that various sectors of the government should be adequately educated to understand the roles each can play in disease control. For instance. Ministries of Agricultures, Natural Resources, Housing and Environment and others should be made to closely interact with the ministry of Health so as to appreciate the impact their involvement can make in health of the people. Such roles by other ministry should center on poverty eradication.
3.    Since ignorance is still an obstacle against the control of malaria, it is important to recommend that adequate airtime is given to malaria control programs in the electronic media, so that people especially the rural dwellers will know how to prevent and manage the disease.
4.    Since malaria is endemic in Nigeria and constitutes a greater percentage of outpatients consultation in hospitals, it is recommended that free medical services should be provided for malaria patients. This will definitely make the difference in reducing the burden of the disease among the citizenry.
5.    Since Plasmodium falciparum was the only Plasmodium parasite found prevanlent in the study, it is safe to recommend the use of easy-to-perform rapid immunodiagnostic techniques in the diagnosis of malaria. The usage is recommended because results obtained from such diagnosis could be quite reliable in the treatment of the infection.
6.        In this era of “Roll Back Malaria” whose approach appears to be mainly preventive, using insecticide treated bed nets (ITNs) to limit both the mosquito population and man-mosquito contact, it is necessary it emphasize the need to make chemoprophylaxis and chemotherapy as important as the use of ITNs. This has become imperative since the long-term effects of the mosquito vector and man is yet to be fully known. It is therefore recommended that equal emphasis be paid to both the development and use of ITNs and anti-malarial drugs.
In conclusion, an integrated approach which combines attacking both the parasite and vectors of the diseases with proper environmental management as well as positioning man to his roles in diseases control will definitely lead to a reduced burden of malaria and increase economic development of the people.