By Oumie Bojang
To increase access and availability of LLINs in rural communities, increase awareness in prevention and control of malaria to ensure a malaria-free country, Child Fund the Gambia on Friday donated 16,000 mosquito bed nets to children and pregnant women of rural Gambia.
The beneficiaries of the donation are URR, CRR and LRR. The ceremony was held at Brikama Sama Kairo office where each region has a representative who received the beds, advised on how these nets will be distributed and how they should sentise the recipients about the importance of using them as not only to protect them from malaria, but will also help the donors achieve their goal of eliminating malaria in the country.
Musukuta Komma Bah, country director of Child Fund Gambia, said Child Fund is an international NGO whose vision and mission is to work with children, their families and communities to transform them into better citizens.
This donation came as a result of Central River Region and Lower River Region struggling to tackle malaria, and Child Fund’s vision is to eliminate malaria, acute-respiratory infections and malnutrition affecting infants and under-fives causing morbidity and mortality in The Gambia.
She added that Child Fund is currently working on three main components, life stage 1 (children between 0-5 years) to ensure that they are protected and secured, life stage 2 (6 to 15 years) to ensure that they are educated and confident to enable them know what they want in life and work toward achieving it, life stage 3 (16 to 24 years) train them on skills to ensure the youths are taking up affairs of the communities they live in interlinking these concerns they found out that they need to provide mosquito nets to children and pregnant women she remarked.
Mr Edi Cham from Global Funds Gambia applauded efforts of Child Fund in providing bed nets to these vulnerable groups. He said this donation will go a long way to not just preventing malaria but to eliminate it in totality.
Mrs Jeandare Jarju Kujabi, representing the PS Ministry of Health, said this donation is significant and couldn’t have come at a better time.
