The Zambezi Regional Health Directorate has commenced its malaria spraying campaign in the region, which has reported over 7,000 cases since January 2023.

Yolanda Lisho, the acting health director for the Zambezi Region, indicated that between January 2023 and January 2024, a total of 7,264 cases were reported, and 367 of those were severe. 

However, the month of January 2024 alone already stands at an alarming number of cases in just 3 weeks.

"So far, we have 511 cases as for the first weeks of January, so among those cases, our under-5 are at 50 cases, and then our above-5 are at 461 cases, which means the most affected age groups are the ones who are above 5 years old. In 2023, we had 6 deaths, and then in 2024, this year, we had 1 death."

The recent death is said to be in the under-5-year category, while details on the six fatalities in 2023 were not provided.

Lisho said they hope that since the ministry has continuously made community members aware of the number of cases reported through ongoing awareness campaigns, spraying teams will have free access to their homes.

She also said that transport has been one of the challenges during the campaign.

"For now, the biggest challenge we have to do with the transportation of our teams is that we have 11 clusters that are supposed to be sprayed, and then we have the challenge of transport. We all know the ministry has not procured vehicles in a long time, so we are using our fleet of vehicles. However,  we've managed to get some vehicles from the community that we've sourced out, of which we only got seven as per our budget.

So far, western Zambezi has been identified as having the most hotspots, with ministry staff already deployed to begin spraying homes in villages such as Kaenda, Kasheshe, Sesheke, Choi, Sibbinda, Sachona, Masokotwani, and Cincimani.