Under-five malaria cases drop in Western Region
The availability of test kits and strict adherence to treatment protocols on malaria continue to yield positive results as the Western Region recorded 26.4 per cent cases in 2018 as against 26.9 in 2017.
Malaria case fatality rate for children under-five has also gone down with a 0.13 per cent in 2018 as against 0.16 per cent in 2017.
Also malaria mortality reduced from 2.1 per 1000 cases in 2016 through 1.3 in 2017 to 0.82 in 2018.
Dr Jacob Mahama, the Western Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, told the Ghana News Agency during the 2018 Regional Review Meeting that training on clinical management of malaria, coupled with rigorous monitoring and supervision, contributed to the down trend of cases.
He said the Region also adhered to the administration of the Intermittent Preventive Therapy against Malaria for pregnant women adding; “All indicators continue to improve across board with IPT-3 rising from 38 per cent in 2017 to 48 per cent in 2018.”
Dr Mahama, however, said TB case notification was still slow with a two per cent marginal increase from 56 per cent to 58 per cent in 2018.
Meanwhile, treatment success rate was still high at 93 per cent with cure rate at 88 per cent in 2018.
Defaulter rate stood at two per cent, the Regional Director of Health added.
On nutrition, the Region for the past five years recorded a drop in figures from 13 per cent to 1.8 per cent in terms of under-five malnutrition while breastfeeding climbed from 91 per cent in 2017 to 94 per cent with exclusive breastfeeding chalking 97.4 per cent.
Dr Mahama said no major outbreak of epidermic prone diseases were recorded in 2018 but surveillance activities were still hampered by the shortage of Child Health Records booklet and vaccines device, broken down vaccine refrigerators, shortage of fridge tags and thermometers.
The challenges, notwithstanding, the Region improved and overran all surveillance indicators except for Polio stool adequacy rate, which stood at 79.9 per cent below the target of 80 per cent.
The Region also did well in the coverages of antigens in 2018 despite challenges in some districts.
Source: GNA