A new malaria prevention program in Oromiya will send hundred of girls with a year’s training to fight malaria at the village level.

The deputy director of the Oromiya Health Bureau, Dr. Kasa Hailu, told Jalene of the Afan Oromo service that these young health workers, all 10^th-grade graduates with a year’s specialized malaria prevention education training, will work in pairs to offer free anti-malarial services in villages.They will teach community members how to reduce the mosquito population by improving sanitation and eliminating standing water where mosquitoes can breed.

The health workers also will distribute more than three million bed nets and teach families how to use them.They will also distribute anti-malaria drug and spray villages with DDT. 

Dr. Kasa said malaria is common throughout the Oromiya region, but it is not an epidemic. Malaria occurs mostly among women and children and is in large part due to the changes occurring in the region’s climate to a hot and dry environment.