The Plateau State Government has concluded a review of the second cycle of the 2026 Seasonal Malaria Chemo-Prevention (SMC) campaign as it prepares to commence the third round, targeting more than one million children across the state.

The review meeting, held in Jos ahead of the August 6 commencement of the third cycle, brought together Roll Back Malaria managers from the 17 local government areas, state supervisors, officials of the Malaria Consortium and programme officers to assess progress, address implementation challenges and strengthen strategies for subsequent rounds.

Speaking at the meeting, the State Coordinator of Malaria Prevention, Kizito Ndak, said the exercise was aimed at evaluating the performance of the second cycle, identifying operational gaps and applying lessons learned to improve the effectiveness of future interventions.

He said the programme had successfully reached well over one million children during the second cycle and expressed confidence that the state would sustain, and possibly exceed, that figure in the third and remaining cycles of the campaign.

“Today’s programme is for us to review what happened in the implementation of cycle two before we go into cycle three, which begins on the 6th of August. We want to identify the challenges, how we mitigated them, and the lessons learned so that we can sustain the success story. We’ve reached well over one million children in cycle two, and we hope to maintain and even surpass that number in cycle three and the remaining cycles,” Ndak said.

He noted that the meeting also provided stakeholders with an opportunity to deliberate on practical ways of improving coordination, supervision and community mobilisation to ensure that every eligible child benefits from the intervention.

According to him, participants brainstormed on strategies that would strengthen the state’s malaria prevention efforts and advance the collective goal of reducing the disease burden across Plateau State.

The Seasonal Malaria Chemo-Prevention programme is one of the state’s key public health interventions aimed at protecting children under the age of five from malaria during the peak transmission season through the administration of preventive medicines.

Health authorities say sustained collaboration among government agencies, development partners and communities remains critical to achieving the campaign’s objectives and further reducing malaria-related illnesses and deaths in Plateau State. (Channels)