By Ahmed Idris
The federal government is tracking the outbreak of Lassa fever, cholera and polio as part of measures to safeguard public health, Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said on Wednesday.
The minister said this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
“Council received the weekly report on the state of public health in Nigeria and we did inform council about four major outbreaks that we are currently tracking. One is Lassa fever and we are quite happy that there is a major decline in a number of reported cases; we have also not reported any deaths in the last two weeks but we still have two cases reported from Edo last week
“We still have cholera in some parts of the country, particularly in Kano, Kebbi, Borno and Zamfara but the outbreak in Borno state is the most significant of all of them. So far since the outbreak started we have recorded 2,719 suspected cases of cholera and we reported 51 deaths in total. We have started cholera vaccination in Borno state as a way of stemming the tide,” he said.
He said a case of yellow fever was reported in Kwara, stressing that public health and surveillance officers of the ministry were deployed to the state to access the situation with a view to commencing immunisation.
The minister commended members of the armed forces and field officers of the ministry vaccinating children in the difficult and security-challenged areas in Borno state in order to containment disease in the area.
“We are quite confident that if we can sustain this in the next two years Nigeria will be certified Polio free and I am also certain that that would imply that Africa would also be certified Polio-free,’’ he said.
“Over the year we have spent 80 per cent of our budget on curative services and that is not really what we are supposed to do. We really need to move in the direction of prevention services and when you look at our budget we are moving more of our budget to preventive care, more money to immunization.
“Because when you immunize our children they will not develop measles, cholera or the things that will make them to die. We are starting with six states that have the worst levels of maternal mortality. We are starting with Jigawa, Zamfara, Kano Katsina, Kebbi and Yobe and we want to crash maternal mortality in those states,” he said.
