Healthcare officials updated people about Diphtheria

Yesterday, 19th October 2023, DG Ifedayo Adetifa, alongside the Co-chair of the National Diphtheria Taskforce, Dr Faisal Shuaib, ED National Primary Health Care Development Agency, conducted a press release to brief the citizens about the progressive steps taken against the Diphtheria epidemic.
As of yesterday, a total of 15,060 suspects are being reported, and 9,478 have been accounted as confirmed cases from 137 LGAs in 20 States, including the FCT. Out of the total 9,478 confirmed cases, 6,777 are said to be children aged between 1-14 years, which is 71.5% of the total confirmed cases.
Notably, according to records culminated by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control across the whole of Nigeria, most of the confirmed cases of diphtheria are the ones who didn’t get vaccinated against the disease.
Out of 9,478 confirmed cases, 5,674 are being labelled as unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, which is 59.8 % of the total. 1,176 individuals are regarded to have unknown vaccination status.
Up to the present moment, the National Rapid Response Teams are being deployed in several territories, which include Kano, Yobe, Katsina, Kaduna, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa & Zamfara States. The teams are providing response support and health facilities, running on-site surveillance in the suffering states.
The disease is marked as unescapable, and the most effective protection against diphtheria is the vaccine. One can take either Pentavalent or TD vaccine.
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control has urged people of Nigeria to get vaccinated in the ongoing vaccination drives running around the states or visit the closest primary healthcare centres.
Diphtheria has been regarded as a highly contagious respiratory disease. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it has killed 58 people in northeastern Guinea as of Thursday, most of which were children. It is considered more dangerous than the one wave that came in 2011.