Report outbreak of diseases early to prevent deaths, NCDC urges states
To avoid a repeat of the current large scale outbreak of meningitis in the country which has claimed over 800 lives in the past few months, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), has charged all state governments and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Administration, to promptly report any outbreak of infectious disease in their environment to the appropriate authorities.
The centre said this would help avert deaths and prevent such outbreak from going out of control and becoming a major national health problem as witnessed in the current meningitis outbreak. It further said an early report would reduce the adverse impact of predictable and contingent public health emergencies.
The reason for the current large scale outbreak of meningitis in the country, the NCDC revealed, was as a result of late detection.
Speaking at a One-Day Media Orientation on Meningitis Outbreak and Response in Abuja recently, Incident Manager of the body, Dr. John Oladejo, told journalists that because Zamfara state where the outbreak first started in December 2016 failed to report the incident to the appropriate authority (the NCDC) until February 7, 2017, the outbreak had had severe impact on the country as it spread to other states, taking many lives on its stride.
In his presentation which focused on the status of the outbreak response, Oladejo emphasised the need for integrated disease surveillance and response activities in all the states, and reiterated that report of outbreak of diseases should be done as quickly as possible to enable the Centre prevent, detect, verify and respond fast.
Noting that the government was taking appropriate steps to contain the outbreak, Oladejo identified very late detection of outbreak, late realisation of potential scale and late institutionalisation of Incident Management System (IMS) structure, slow and tedious application process for vaccines, insufficient human resources at NCDC to manage two large scale outbreaks simultaneously as major challenges that confronted the current meningitis outbreak.
He also blamed the problem on what he described as “zero laboratory architecture” to support surveillance activities and zero funding in NCDC for outbreak response.
“Furthermore, we cannot store the vaccine. The vaccine can only be given to us by the World Health Organisation (WHO) only where there are confirmed cases, that is why we need to report early to avoid delay in procurement of vaccines”, he explained.
While assuring that NCDC will do its best to ensure there are no disease outbreak of this magnitude again in Nigeria, the incident manager said the cumulative number of suspected cases recorded in Nigeria throughout the outbreak period is now 9,646 with 839 deaths from 43 Local Government Areas across 23 states.
However, giving insight into its recent assessment of the outbreak, Oladejo said, following the current national and state interventions, the number of new cases has dropped.
Commenting on the objective of the media orientation which was organised by NCDC in collaboration with UNCIEF, Technical Assistant, Communication, NCDC, Dr. Lawal Bakare, said the centre had developed an aggressive prevention and risk communication programme to tackle the outbreak.
Calling on the media to properly educate the people on how to protect themselves against meningitis and other infectious diseases, Bakare reminded the Federal and state governments of the need to put effective and functional laboratory in place to fast track early detection.
He expressed regret that the laboratory capacity in the country is weak.
“Government should improve and strengthen our laboratory capacity to detect diseases. States ought to have effective laboratory so that they can test and confirm cases before reporting,“ he said.
Bakare insisted that states must take responsibility for reporting cases of diseases to the appropriate authorities while appealing to the media to alert and remind the government early about possible disease outbreaks and their seasons.
UNICEF representative, Mrs. Margret Soyemi who is a Communication Development Officer, pledged UNICEF’s support to the government in containing the outbreak.
“UNICEF is willing to partner with other stakeholders and will continue to offer technical support “, she said.
Also, in his presentation which dwelt on key facts about meningitis and the Nigeria situation, a laboratory epidemiologist with NCDC, Dr Abiodun Oguniyi, urged Nigerians not to joke with the disease because it kills within hours and requires emergency medical attention, assuring that meningitis needs not kill as there’s an effective treatment for it.
