Nigeria: malaria threatens some slums in Lagos

Makoko is a coastal neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, where houses on stilts are built over murky, polluted water.

In the streets of this informal neighborhood, we often find, among the waste, pools of dirty water, which provide ideal conditions for the reproduction of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Funmilayo Kotun no longer has enough money to pay for his medication against this disease. She says: “the place where we live is not healthy, it is flooded with water, excrement and waste. I don't have a mosquito net, we only have mosquito repellent. My grandson and I were bitten by mosquitoes and I contracted malaria.”

Adebiyi Olubukola, founder of a local NGO called JAKIN, helps residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods, according to her the fight against malaria goes hand in hand with improving their living conditions.

“In low-income communities, who live at the bottom of the social ladder, in slums, it is more common for environmental factors to favor the development of malaria. Today, malaria is not believed to pose a threat to people's lives. And we ensure that the living conditions of our communities are maintained at a certain level, across Africa. If we can strengthen our community systems to achieve these standards, then we can eradicate malaria for good,” says Adebiyi Olubukola. 

The malaria parasite is transmitted to humans through infected mosquitoes and can cause symptoms such as fever, headache and chills. It mainly affects children under 5 years old and pregnant women. In 2022, there will be an estimated 249 million cases of malaria and 608,000 deaths from malaria in 85 countries.

Africa is, by far, the most affected with 94% of malaria cases recorded on the continent.