THE pilferage of drugs from public facilities is one vice the Ministry of Health has been grappling with over the years. So many interventions have since been put in place to curb the vice.
But to hear of the more than 1,700 mosquito nets that have been stolen in Chiengi District in Lupula Province is a major drawback to the country’s quest to eradicate diseases such malaria, much less reducing maternal mortality.
These are issues that are moving the country so many steps backwards,even regarding the attainment of Millennium Development Goals. How does one explain pilferage of mosquito nets in such a huge consignment?
Reports of the over 100 bales of mosquito nets that were meant for the Integrated Reproductive Health Programme that went missing between late last year and early this year make very sad reading.
We hope Chiengi police will get to the bottom of the matter to ensure the culprits are brought to book immediately. The theft of the nets is not only a detriment to healthcare delivery to mothers and their newly-born babies but the community at large.
Obviously people who have ended up in possession of the nets are not going to use them as mosquito nets but fishing nets. This brings about the hazard of people consuming fish caught using the treated nets.
Apart from that, mosquito nets are classified under the prohibited fishing methods which are likely to deplete the already dwindling fish stocks in many water bodies in the country, especially during the breeding season.
Using the insecticide-treated mosquito nets is a destructive method of fishing because it hauls out everything from the water bodies, which include fingerlings and other fish species, as well as eggs.
The rampant cases of mosquito nets being turned into fishing nets are disheartening. Already some unscrupulous fishermen in Luapula Province and other fishing areas are said to be using them to catch Chisense, a very small type of fish that is in the sardine species.
What is still not adding up, however, is the fact that the mosquito nets were stolen from various health facilities across the district.
It appears the theft must have happened through some form of a syndicate.
How else could various health centres in the district lose the same commodity? We are pretty certain that the various health facilities in Chiengi do not use the same key, and neither do they use the same store room.
Some one must be answerable somewhere. Anyway, how the mosquito nets went missing is a matter that the police will have to investigate but our interest is how some one would just think of stealing mosquito nets meant for a community.
Already the officer-in-charge at Chienge Police Station is complaining that most public institutions in the district took too long to report cases to the police which made investigations difficult for the law-enforcement agencies.
It would also be imperative on health workers countrywide to sensitise citizens on the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net. We feel that is the only way people will begin to have a sense of guilt by harbouring a thought to steal them.
Unfortunately in Luapuala Province, it is not only in Chiengi where the problem is rampant. The Fisheries authorities in the district have also been complaining that the use of illegal fishing methods was frustrating the sustainable management of fishery.
District fisheries research officer, Masiliso Phiri complained that fishers in the area had continued using illegal fishing gears with impunity and had no regard for the law.
The lawlessness that is being exhibited by the fishers, especially the illegal settlers in the Government-gazetted fish-breeding areas of Potolo, Kashilu, Kanakashi, Mupitwa and Mifimbo is an assault on the prudent management of the fish resource.
We commend efforts of some traditional leaders such as Senior Chief Kalimankonde of the Unga people in Lunga District in Luapula Province who has embarked on an exercise to sensitise his subjects against using mosquito nets for fishing. OPINION