The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Thomas Tayebwa, has asked the Ministry of Health to come up with a strategy for countrywide spraying against mosquitoes to eliminate malaria. Tayebwa argued that this will save lives and reduce the high costs of treating malaria.
He called on the Minister of Health, Dr. Ruth Aceng, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to reconcile their positions on spraying because countries that have eliminated malaria have sprayed.
“We don’t need to go and invent the wheel, let us decide a country that we are going to spray, and we, Parliament, shall give you that money to spray,” the Deputy Speaker said.
“Because a person from Mitooma doesn’t know your negotiations and politics of you disagreeing with WHO, they don’t even know WHO though it is our biggest partner, what they want is eliminating malaria,” he argued.
The Deputy Speaker made the call during the Malaria Walk held in Kampala. The Malaria Walk comes at the time when WHO ranks Uganda 3rd on the list of globally burdened countries with at least 12 million malaria cases reported annually. The 2021 World Malaria Report ranked Uganda as the 5th top contributor to global malaria deaths.
“The other time, Parliament said we can’t spray, now this is a new Parliament, we are going to take charge. We are going to push it on the floor, we shall provide the money and Parliament will not interfere as long as you feel that is the right thing to do. If Rwanda has sprayed, if Kenya has sprayed, if Tanzania has sprayed and malaria has gone, you scientists, agree with each other,” added stated.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, promised to ensure the nationwide strategy of eliminating malaria is brought to Parliament. She also called for increased funding for malaria elimination using locally generated resources to cover the gap that will be left by donors who have indicated plans to reduce funding to Uganda to focus on more global challenges.
“Re-planning requires that we identify a safe chemical that can be used so that we can carry out the spraying and bring down this burden of Malaria and we stop putting ourselves as number three in the race against donating Malaria.
As a Ministry, we shall go back and re-plan and develop the strategy and present it to Parliament. That will be after presenting it to the Cabinet because it has to start from the top,” said Aceng.