Plan mosquito spraying well

Government plans to roll out a new indoor residual spraying (IRS) programme in northern Uganda this September as part of efforts to stem the rising cases of malaria infections in the region.
This is long overdue and perhaps needs to be rolled out across the country to achieve the best results.
According to statistics by the Ministry of Health, malaria accounts for on average 30 per cent of in-patient death and up to 70 per cent of all out-patient visits to health centres across the country. Besides the disruption malaria causes on production, school attendance, etc, expenditure on the disease consumes over 25 per cent of household incomes.

Many districts in northern Uganda are particularly hit because of the swamp terrain of the Lake Kyoga Basin. This move is, therefore, welcome considering the incessant deaths of especially children under five that could be avoided, and the debilitating effects of malaria especially on poor households.
The question, however, is what happened to the earlier IRS programme that was touted as having cut the incidence of malaria in the region? Why was it not sustained, and what measures have been put in place to ensure it will be sustained this time?
The other question, of course, is what chemical will be used for the IRS programme and how effective is it?
When the programme was first mooted a few years ago, the chemical of choice and one which has been proven to be the cheapest and most effective was DDT. But after a lot of noise from environmentalists, pseudo-environmentalists, and all and sundry, this was abandoned in favour of pyrethrum-based products which were expensive and whose efficacy was low. So in the end, we ended up where we started and now have to start all over again.

We hope the government has this time thought through all this in terms of how to sustain the programme for a long time until malaria is controlled or eradicated altogether, and what type of chemical will be applied. This information never came out with the announcement which is making many Ugandans anxious.
We hope the ministry of Health will be more comprehensive and not simply throw money in a good programme but poorly executed, leaving the country more sick and poor.