BY SOLA OGUNDIPE

A HOST of Nigerian celebrities have been engaged in a national multimedia  malaria campaign  to encourage sleeping  under  Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Nets and promptly seeking diagnosis and appropriate malaria treatment.

Under the innovative NightWatch campaign, spearheaded by Malaria No More in  partnership with ExxonMobil  and the Federal Ministry of Health, with local and state governments in Rivers and Akwa Ibom States,  popular celebrities, including Chief Zebrudiah, Bez, Chioma Akpotha, Eva Alordiah, Falz the Bad Guy, Femi Kuti, Funke Akindele, I Go Dye, Mikel Obi, Stephen Keshi, Victor Moses, Vincent Enyeama and Waje, will disseminate anti-malaria messages to help stop the spread of malaria.

The programme, known nationally as the “Malaria-Free Nigeria: Play Your Part” campaign will feature across multiple media platforms including radio and television advertisements to every night throughout 2014.

Speaking on the concept, Managing Director, Malaria No More, Mr. Mark Allen, said the campaign was the result of a signature of Public Private Partnership PPP, with ExxonMobil following the success in Tanzania, Chad, Cameroun and Senegal.

“It began in 2012 when I was introduced to Dayo Oluwole who said, bring this campaign to Nigeria. I was excited. Everyone felt Nigeria was different because it was more complex relative to the other countries. The population was larger, so on the advice of Exxonmobil, we spent the better part of 2013 trying to understudy how health education campaigns have worked in other countries and can be adapted in Nigeria.”

Explaining the essence of NightWatch, Allen remarked that in every community we have done research to determine how local populations understand malaria, how they perceive the serousness of the threat, and how they take appropriate prevention and control behaviour.

“In Nigeria we conducted Focused Group Discussion across the six geopolitical zones in December 2013. One of the key outcomes was that malaria is real and it has a negative impact in the country. But it is not taken as a major issue, and it is still percieved as a minor public health issue.

“The reality is that if you are talking about the global health issue of malaria you have to be talking in the same vein as malaria.  It has the world’s largest burden in terms of mortality. We need to raise the consciousness in Nigeria to deal with it.“

Allen remarked tha in Nigeria there is access to ITNs but there is apathy. to increased access. There is a gap. From the 2010 survey, 29 percent of children under five are sleeping under the nets,  yet there is access of 60-75 percent. This gap is what Nightwatch is trying to bridge.”

Launching the initiative, Minister of State for Health, Dr Khaliru Alhassan, said it was a follow up of government effort that has led to malaria prevalence rate to below 50 percent. General Manager, NNPC, Abuja, ExxonMobile Affiliates, Mr Eyinnaya Onokala, who represented the Chairman/MD, ExxonMobil Upstream Affiliates, Mr. Nolan O’Neal, described NightWatch as a national campaign which seeks to drive appropriate PPP action on malaria treatment and prevention.

“We know all too well the impact malaria can have on the lives of our employees, families and communities in Nigeria, and that’s why we support an array of international efforts and programmes like Malaria-Free Nigeria to prevent and treat this disease,” he opined.