The Environmental Health Officers Association of Nigeria, Federal Capital Territory chapter, has called for a paradigm shift from malaria control to vector control.

The association’s President, Ismaila Dankogi, made the call during an interview in Abuja on Friday.

Mr Dankogi spoke on the sidelines of an event organised to commemorate the 2025 World Malaria Day, saying that shifting attention to vector control would achieve the desired results.

He argued that not much has been achieved in the fight against malaria in the last 15 years because mosquitos, the malaria vector, were allowed to breed uncontrollably.

According to him, tackling mosquitos through rigorous environmental sanitation will drastically reduce the prevalence of malaria in the FCT.

He said, “For the past 15 years we have been rolling back malaria with little success. Considering the alarming rate at which malaria kills means not much has been achieved.”

He stressed the need for a change of approach, “particularly if we keep addressing issues in a similar way without recording significant results.”

He said it was time for the FCT Administration to reinvest, reignite and think outside the box for a cost effective and results oriented intervention – vector control.

He stated, “We have been talking about how to control malaria; we should be thinking this time round, on how to control the mosquitoes so that we can reduce their population in our environment. By the time we have aerial spray of large breeding grounds of mosquitos and carry out effective pest and vector control in our environment, the prevalence of malaria would be drastically reduced.’’

Speaking on the roles of environmental health inspectors in the campaign against malaria, Mr Dankogi said that the officers were doing their best but plagued with a myriad of challenges.

He explained that the officers go on house-to-house inspection and issuing notices to compelled residents to conduct quarterly pest and vector control but with limited coverage.

He identified some of the challenges as non-implementation of relevant environmental and sanitation laws, death of manpower and lack of logistics for environmental health officers.

“We have the Environmental Council of Nigeria that has the National Environmental Practice Regulations. We also have the Abuja Environmental Protection Board with pest and vector control as one its mandates. I am equally aware that the FCT area councils have bylaws that address environmental and sanitation concerns. However, many of these laws and bylaws are not being fully implemented,” he said.

The president said that the laws and regulations empowered environmental health officers to enter house to house, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to curb environmental nuisance, “but they have challenges. Number one; the public are hostile to them. Two; the officers don’t have logistics and three, they are unemployed. To address these challenges, the relevant laws need to be fully implemented. We need to also provide logistics to the environmental health officers and employ more environmental officers to man every street and communities of the FCT.”

(NAN)