Deputy Director of Preventive Health Services in the Ministry of Health responsible for Malaria, Dr Lumbani Munthali has told Zodiak that the bed nets have been distributed in 13 districts including Nsanje and Chikwawa where the cases are high.

He further explained that camp managers together with health workers are still collecting data to come up with current malaria statistics after the Tropical Cyclone Freddy.

“As expected, after floods you will have stagnant waters which cause an increase in malaria. Some information is also being collected on conditions of people including malaria, so we are still analyzing the data,” said Dr Munthali.

He added that as the ministry of health they had 4,250 bed mosquito nets that were reserved for disaster and later got another support from USA Presidential Malaria initiative that gave Malawi 10,000 mosquito nets.

“In total, we have distributed 14, 500 bed nets in 13 affected districts. We have also just received 4, 104 bed nets from our partner, PATH, which have already been distributed in Nsanje which experiences malaria burden,” he explained.

On his part, PATH Hub leader for Southern Africa, Dr Earnest Muyunda said they decided to assist after receiving a request from the government of Malawi.

“we support programs towards eradication of malaria in Malawi, it is the area that is very aligned to our work and also it is a humanitarian request, so we decided to assist. We are not a funding organisation, we get funding from major funders like the USA government through USAID and others,” said Dr Muyunda.

Nsanje District Commissioner Dominic Mwandira thanked PATH for supporting the district with mosquito nets while asking others to assist people that are still  staying in camps with food aid.