{"id":71827,"date":"2025-08-01T03:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=71827"},"modified":"2025-08-01T03:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:40:15","slug":"fct-targets-nearly-one-million-children-for-malaria-prevention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/01\/fct-targets-nearly-one-million-children-for-malaria-prevention\/","title":{"rendered":"FCT Targets Nearly One Million Children for Malaria Prevention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Njoku Chijioke<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is aiming to reach 939,729 children under five with Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC), in 2025, a preventive intervention designed to protect vulnerable children during peak malaria season.<\/p>\n<p>Olutomi Sodipo, State Project Manager of the Philanthropic Funding SMC (PF SMC), said the program employs a door-to-door approach where trained community drug distributors administer a monthly three-day course of Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine and Amodiaquine (SPAQ), to children aged 3-59 months.<\/p>\n<p>Since its introduction in 2022, the program has recorded steady progress in the FCT.<\/p>\n<p>As of July 2025, two cycles of the treatment have been completed, with administrative coverage rates of 98.4% and 99.6%. The third cycle is scheduled for August 8-11.<\/p>\n<p>However, challenges remain, including poor adherence to national guidelines, inadequate house-marking, and incomplete data capture.<\/p>\n<p>To improve delivery, faith-based organizations are being engaged as additional distribution hubs.<\/p>\n<p>Authorities are urging caregivers to cooperate with health workers and ensure children complete the full SPAQ regimen.<\/p>\n<p>They also stress the importance of combining SMC with other measures like insecticide-treated nets to reduce malaria incidence.<\/p>\n<p>With sustained government backing and community participation, the FCT hopes to make significant strides toward malaria elimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Njoku Chijioke The Federal Capital Territory (FCT), is aiming to reach 939,729 children under five with Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC), in 2025, a preventive intervention designed to protect vulnerable children during peak malaria season. Olutomi Sodipo, State Project Manager of the Philanthropic Funding SMC (PF SMC), said the program employs a door-to-door approach where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":71828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71829,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71827\/revisions\/71829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}