By Haruna Gimba
The Federal Government has commenced the training of Patent Pharmacists and Medicine Vendors (PPMV) on the use of Rapid DiagnosticTests (RDTs) for malaria treatment.
The National Coordinator, National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), Dr. Nnenna Ezeigwe stated this in Lagos at the launch of the programme tagged, ‘National Guidelines on Diagnosis and Treatment of Malaria in Nigeria.’
Represented by Assistant Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, NMEP, Mr. Tim Obot, the national coordinator explained that the programme was designed to ensure that every case of fever is tested and confirmed before malaria treatment could be administered.
She said the programme would afford the NMEP an opportunity of building the capacity of the PPMVs, adding that the National Council on Health has permitted the PPMVs to use the RDTs in their establishments, which was due to the recent policy called Test, Treat and Track (TTT).
“Now as a PPMV before you administer drugs to a patient for malaria treatment, you have to first perform RDT. Normally everybody that has malaria would show symptom of fever but not all fevers are caused by malaria; that is why you must test before you treat and the approved treatment for malaria now is Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT),” she said.
Dr. Ezeigwe lamented that a lot of people do not like to go to hospitals when they fall sick but prefer to go to a pharmacist shop closest to them to buy drugs.
“In most cases, the pharmacist treats them based on assumptions but after this training which would end on Friday they would start doing the right thing which is test before treatment,” she said.
She added that the training would teach hem the importance of testing before treatment, to stop the use of mono-therapies such as the use of Chloroquine for the treatment of malaria.
