The Ghana Health Service (GHS) in the Upper East Region is to distribute Long Lasting Insecticide Treated Nets to more than 1.1 million residents in 275,967 households across 12 Districts of the Region.

Dr Josephat Nyuzaghl, the Upper East Deputy Regional Director of the GHS in charge of Public Health, announced this at a stakeholder engagement in Bolgatanga.

"Hopefully, we will be distributing 613,260 Long Lasting Insecticide Treated Nets."

He said two persons within a household would be allocated a net and said the initiative was intended to draw the Region towards universal coverage, where two people in every household would have a net.

Dr Nyuzaghl said out of the 15 Districts in the Region, the Kassena-Nankana West, Builsa North and South Districts, were benefitting from the indoor residual spraying exercise and would not be included in the distribution exercise.

He said the GHS had trained 795 Registration Assistants to register household heads and persons living within the household to enable them to redeem their nets on the day of distribution.

Dr Nyuzaghl said 133 staff of the service were also identified and trained to supervise the Registration Assistants.

"We don't want a situation where on the day of the distribution, individual data cannot be retrieved."

He said there would be 368 distribution points across the 12 beneficiary Districts of the Region, which would be manned by three Distribution Point Assistants to control the crowd and ensure adherence to the COVID-19 protocols.

"So in all, we will be deploying 1,104 Distribution Point Assistants, and we have identified 74 of our officers who would be trained to supervise the Distribution Point Assistants to ensure that persons who have been duly registered and have appeared at the distribution points can redeem their nets appropriately," he said.

He said the one-week registration exercise commenced on April 7 and would end on April 13, 2021.

"If you are not registered, you cannot get the net. Persons who will be visiting homes as Registration Assistants will have unique identity cards."

The Deputy Director urged members of the public to look out for the identity cards of the Registration Assistants before granting them an audience.

He said the exercise would help reduce malaria incidence in the Region and prevent unnecessary malaria deaths.

Mr Sydney Ageyomah Abilba, the Upper East Regional Focal Person for Malaria, emphasized that the nets were not for sale and called on the security agencies to ensure that the nets were not sold in the open market.

He advised residents to sleep under the nets if they received them and not use them for other purposes such as gardening.