Nigeria needs to be more proactive on resistant malaria –Don

An expert in malaria, Professor Fatai Fehintola had said that Nigeria need to be more proactive in preventing multiple drug resistant strains of malaria, despite reduction in malaria incidence in the country.

Professor Fehintola stated this at an inaugural lecture he delivered at the University of Ibadan, entitled “Good for Goose; Grave for Gander: Selective Toxicity in the Service of Man.”

Fehintola stated that facilities for drug testing were still lacking to ensure adequate monitoring of malaria drugs, even at tertiary institutions.

According to him, healthcare delivery without facility for drug testing in biological fluids is suboptimal, adding, “the establishment of facilities fully equipped to assay drugs and poisons in biological fluids is long overdue in Nigeria”.

The clinical pharmacologist urged the Federal Government to consider the establishment of fully functional clinical pharmacology laboratories in each geopolitical zone of Nigeria.

Professor Fehintola, who described malaria as the most important parasitic disease of humans causing substantial ill health and deaths, stated that it is possible to contract malaria infection through unnatural means such as a needle stick injury and blood transfusion aside mosquito bite.

He also urged relevant health professionals to emphasise rational prescription of malaria drugs to avoid wastage, reduce mortality and mortality.

According to him, “good clinical practice demands that presence of malaria parasite be established either by using rapid diagnostic test or microscopy before administering anti-malarial drugs to an individual.”

Professor Fehintola also justified the rationale for combination therapy for malaria, stating that the relative slow evolution of drug resistance in malaria was partly explainable by the inadvertent combination therapy that uses chloroquine with cotrimoxazole for malaria treatment in Nigeria.

The expert noted the unholy alliance between malaria, HIV and Tuberculosis and declared that coexistence of any two, for example, HIV and malaria, usually aggravates each other.

He also stated that HIV-positive individuals were more likely to experience treatment failure of malaria if artesunate-amodiaquine was taken for malaria treatment due to reactions between antiretroviral drugs and this malaria drug.