At a signing ceremony on February 22, 2018 in Niamey between Nigerian Minister of Public Health, Idi Illiassou Mainassara, and USAID Director General for the Sahel, Alisa Cameron, it was announced that Niger will benefit from $18 million from the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative [PDF, 860KB] during the first year of the program. The Minister remarked that the country “faces the many health challenges in general and in particular, the persistence of high malaria cases in the most vulnerable age groups of our population, namely children under 5 and pregnant women.” Malaria is the main reason that adults miss work and children miss school. The NMCP Director, Dr. Hadiza, took the opportunity of the launch to call upon other donors to also invest in the upcoming ITN mass distribution campaign, which is scheduled to start in June 2018.
Read the full press release.