Oyo transiting from malaria burdensome to malaria-free state

Oyo State Health Commissioner, Dr Bode Ladipo says the state is transiting from a malaria burdensome state in South Western Nigeria to a malaria-free state, as evidenced in the last 10 years by difficulty in getting individuals with malaria for testing and control.

Dr Ladipo, who disclosed this when receiving 16 electronic microscopes, including one for teaching, as well as other laboratory consumables donated by  US President’s Malaria Initiative for States (PMIs), said the microscopes will further help ensure the diagnosis of malaria and the state’s becoming malaria free.

He declared “we have started to see a marked reduction in the number of cases that are confirmed to be malaria. More importantly, as Oyo state is transiting from a malaria burdensome state and moving towards being malaria-free, we need to start looking at making appropriate diagnoses.

“Diagnosis of malaria is evidenced by a positive rapid diagnostic test result, but the gold standard is still microscopy. So these microscopes will bring to bear the issues pertaining to capacity-building, upgrade as well as making a critical effort towards confirming the level of malaria in Oyo state.”

On the state’s reference laboratory, he said this will become fully operational within 2 months to ensure a viable system for diagnosis of new and old infectious diseases across the state.

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According to him, “we are looking at a situation in which we have a laboratory in Oyo State that will be able to serve for a lot of issues, including infectious diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis as well as any other diseases that are resurfacing within our climes.

“It is not appropriate for a state like us to be sending samples for something like cholera outside of the confines of the state for confirmation and we will do everything in our powers to ensure that is put in the past.”

Dr Oluwayemisi Ayandipo, the State Coordinator for US President’s Malaria Initiative for States (PMIs), stated that functional microscopes are important to ensure malaria elimination in the state even as the donated microscopes were to be distributed to health facilities with high cliental burdens to  improve malaria diagnosis and care.

She stated that PMIs was also supporting the state to have a quality assurance and quality control laboratory, while the teaching microscope will come useful in building the capacity of other medical laboratory scientists on malaria microscopy aside from the 26 PMIs trained laboratory scientists in the state.