Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

A non-governmental organisation, Hacey Health Initiative, has boosted the fight against malaria fever by conducting free malaria tests, chemical prophylaxis for pregnant women and sharing free treated mosquito nets to Rivers State people.

The programme, held in conjunction with Access Holding Plc in Rumueme, Obio/Akpor, Rivers State, is part of Hacey Health Initiative’s 2025 ‘End Malaria Programme’ campaign, a community-centred health outreach.

The outreach aimed at reducing malaria incidence and improving access to prevention, testing, and treatment services for women, pregnant mothers, and children under five in high-burden communities.

According to Bamidele Oyewumi, Hacey Health Initiative’s Programme Manager, this year’s outreach, with the theme: ‘Malaria Ends With Us: Reinvest, Reimagine, Reignite’, is focusing on Delta and Rivers States while targeting 2,000 beneficiaries.

He said the vision behind the outreach was to reduce malaria, a menace he lamented had made many women unproductive, to a zero level in all the impacted communities.

“Malaria is one of the things that affect most women and children in our communities. Today, we’re implementing the end-malaria project where we want to see zero malaria in our community.

“This is because children under 5 miss school, women are not having active productive engagement because of preventable malaria. Malaria is a disease and infection in our community where it is abetted by unclean environmental, unethical hygiene and poor health-seeking behaviour.

“This project is designed to sensitise community on preventable ways to end malaria by themselves. We’re also doing testing for people that are living with malaria to know their status, and then we refer them to treatment, including pregnant women, women and children, so that they can be given malaria treatment,” he said.

Regional Manager, Rivers 3 Region in Access Bank, Port Harcourt, Ogechi Irehie, said their bank’s partnership with Hacey Health Initiative was a way of giving back to society.

She explained that the financial challenges making it difficult for some people to obtain malaria treatment made it imperative for them to support the ‘end malaria outreach’.

“The bank (Access) is partnering Hacey Health Initiative to combat malaria. That’s basically why we are here to sensitise the people on the dangers of having malaria disease. We’re also here to screen them; we’ll also be given out mosquito nets, giving out drugs for those of them that will test positive.

“You know a lot of persons are actually challenged due to financial constraints. So to ameliorate all of that, the bank decided to partner with this organisation, Hacey Health, to see how we can support our people having all these challenges, most especially malaria.

“This is just one out of the numerous CSR (corporate social responsibility) projects we do. We do a lot but for this particular one, it’s just to fight malaria,” she said.

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