39 health personnel were yesterday deployed to Adamawa by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help curtail the rapidly growing cholera epidemic in the State that has since claimed 13 lives in two local council areas.

Dr. Wondimagegnehu Alemu, a WHO representative to Nigeria announced the deployment on Tuesday in a statement released in Maiduguri.

According to him, the deployment was a first step towards engaging at least 15 additional ad-hoc personnel to Mubi North and South Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Adamawa.

In the same vein, WHO has also commenced “measles interruption transmission” to about 200,000 children in Borno State. The program highlights provision of technical and financial support services to health authorities.

The support will also boost immunity of children against measles diseases in newly accessible areas liberated by the Nigerian Military.

Alemu also said that the implementation of the selective measles vaccination campaign, are to be conducted in nine LGAs of Borno State.

Stressing further in his statement, Alemu said: “We have swiftly deployed technical staff to oversee and coordinate partners’ response to the current outbreak, support case management, surveillance and contact tracing of suspected cases to guide interventions.”

“This is to ensure that the outbreak does not spread across to other neighbouring council areas of Adamawa, including the Cameroonian border areas of Sahuda.”

According to him, On May 26, 2018, 434 unconfirmed cases were reported with 13 deaths in the affected local council areas.

He said these alarming statistics prompted the health authority to swing the Emergency operations center into action for the purpose of concerted response and rapid decision-making. Alemu went further to lament the incredible transmission rate of the ongoing cholera outbreak in the state.

“This is worrisome and must be stopped to save lives, as the rainy season commences,” he said.

He also added: “We’re learning from our past experience and leveraging on lessons learned in controlling major cholera outbreaks in internally displaced person camps and host communities, especially in Yobe and Borno states.”

Dr. Fatima Atiku Abubakar, the Commissioner for health in the state said that the health authority is collaborating with WHO and other relevant partners to ensure that the outbreak does not spread to other council areas.

“We have set all relevant sectors in motion including WASH, situated a cholera treatment center at General Hospital in Mubi North LGA and activated an Emergency Operations Centre to rapidly break the transmission,” the commissioner gave assurance.

House-to-house sensitization by mothers in host communities is among other activities set in motion to help bring the outbreak under control.

She added that sensitization of traditional rulers is ongoing while media outlets are already making announcements to make sure people in affected communities and beyond are aware of the risk of cholera, its mode of transmission and how to prevent it.

Alemu stressed that more efforts are needed, as incidence rate increase geometrically on a daily basis to avoid spreads to other parts of the state.

“The four-day exercise aims at vaccinating more than 200 000 children aged six months – 15 years recently accessed locations across nine local government areas (LGAs) of the state,” Alemu said in the statement.

According to him, the focus will be on councils like Magumeri, Damboa, Nganzai where suspected cases of measles were reported in April 2018.  

Source: The Guardian News