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Malaria Consortium responds to urgent call to deliver SMC to two million children in Borno state

30 July 2021
Malaria Consortium responds to urgent call to deliver SMC to two million children in Borno state

Malaria Consortium is delivering seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) across Borno state in northeast Nigeria to approximately two million children under five who would otherwise not have had access to the intervention due to a funding gap emerging at short notice. 

Malaria Consortium’s rapid response to filling this gap is made possible as a result of the philanthropic funding it receives, allowing the organisation flexibility to direct resources to the areas of greatest need. 

The WHO-recommended intervention is designed to provide protection from malaria to those most at risk during the rainy season: children under five. The intervention, a combination of two safe and efficacious drugs - amodiaquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine - is delivered directly to eligible children at their home, once a month for four months, from July to October. 

Malaria Consortium has been delivering SMC campaigns in Nigeria since 2013 and this year, in addition to the support being given in Borno state, is also supporting SMC delivery across ten other states reaching over 16 million children in total. More than six million of those children had not previously been reached by SMC. To achieve this scale of delivery, Malaria Consortium works closely with the National Malaria Elimination Programme, as well as state, regional and district health authorities to organise and coordinate the campaign. 

Borno state is a particularly challenging environment to deliver SMC, with many people living in formal and informal camps for displaced people and additional challenges of security in some areas of the state due to instability and unrest. Malaria Consortium is working directly with state teams, health workers and other partners to capitalise on their existing experience of delivering interventions in this context, in addition to providing training, tools and commodities for safe delivery of SMC in the context of COVID-19.

“We are very pleased that we are in a position to respond to this need in such an agile way and support SMC delivery in Borno state. It is heartening to know that an additional two million children will receive this potentially life-saving intervention in an area where access to treatment at health facilities for malaria can be very difficult. Although this is a new context for Malaria Consortium, our leadership of the SMC programme in Nigeria and our experience in making context-specific adaptations to delivering the intervention means we are confident in our ability to do this successfully.” Maxwell Kolawole, West and Central Africa Programmes Director, Malaria Consortium.

Learn more about Malaria Consortium's work on seasonal malaria chemoprevention on our dedicated page.

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