Nigeria

In Nigeria, SMC was implemented from June to October 2023. Currently, 21 states implement SMC in Nigeria. The NMEP of Nigeria implemented four cycles of SMC in 16 states and five cycles in 5 states. About 28.9 million children were covered with SMC in 2023. The NMP is targeting a similar number of children in 2024. Children aged 3-59 months were covered.  10 states are covered by Malaria Consortium while 2 states are covered by the President’s Malaria Initiative PMI. Some state governments also support the implementation of SMC.

SMC digitization in Nigeria is based on the “bring your own device” approach for community volunteers. Digitization of the collection of SMC data was piloted in two states in 2021. By 2023, digitization had been scaled up in 12 states. In addition to supporting data collection, cohort tracking, improving monitoring, and commodity tracking, the digitalization tool has helped to track the teams implementing SMC.

Essentially, the app sends an alert if one of the teams is not active so that alternative action can be taken. SMC cohort tracking has also been enhanced via the use of unique beneficiary IDs assigned to each child’s profile on the ICT4D platform. The unique ID is used throughout all cycles and enables accurate cohort tracking and individual retention as well as adherence monitoring.

In the future, the NMEP would like to intensify education for caregivers on the importance of retaining the child’s record card and unique IDs. It would also like to fully utilize the benefits of technology to improve the efficiency and quality of service delivery. Similarly, it would also be useful to integrate SMC & ITN campaigns to benefit from synergies such as health workers’ time and use of technology.

The main challenges encountered include community drug distributors occasionally entering wrong beneficiary information or selecting the wrong profile of the child when administering SMC. Sometimes, information on previous beneficiary children is also entered anew. These issues can be resolved by enhancing the overall capacity of community distributors and by tracking beneficiary children strictly with unique IDs. What is more, the generation of unique IDs during cycle 2 will be restricted.