26 states risk outbreak of menigitis this year —FG
By Segun Olatunji, Kaduna
Published: Friday, 13 Feb 2009
The Federal Government on Thursday in Kaduna raised the alarm of an impending outbreak of the deadly cerebro spinal meningitis in about 26 states of the federation this year.

The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Aliyu Idi Hong, disclosed this at an advocacy and sensitisation meeting of the commissioners for health from the 26 high risk CSM states on enhanced meningitis control, epidemic preparedness and response.

He said that the CSM epidemic, which occurred every 10 years mainly in the 19 Northern states, had now spread into about seven other states in the southern part of the country.

The southern states standing the risk of the epidemic include Oyo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Anambra and Cross River State.

According to Hong, a worse outbreak of the disease, which last broke out in the country in 1996 and resulted in a high casualty figure, was being expected since 2007.

He added that there were clear indications that the nation was “sitting on the keg of gunpowder waiting to explode.”

The minister, however, said that the Federal Government had already taken proactive measures to check the outbreak and spread of the epidemic through the procurement of 1.6million doses of drugs.

He added that the Federal Ministry of Health had also set aside about N300m for other drugs to manage the situation.

Hong said, “Every functionary must start to prepare for the emergencies towards addressing this issue.

“You don’t need to be told. It happened in 1986; it came around in 1996 and we have been expecting it since 2007 and we are seeing the graph going up.

“We are now at the verge of a major epidemic. So, I see no reason why we shouldn’t have started working towards arresting this epidemic in good time.

The quantity is small but the beauty of avoiding this epidemic is that we just need a very small population to provide immunity for the entire population.

“So we are hoping because there is a global scarcity of supply of this vaccine. We were made to understand that the accredited manufacturers of this drug will only manufacture about six million doses in a year.

“So, we are challenged. We are the highest demander of this supply. So, we are ordering about 1.6million doses and in the next one week it will be available and it will be sent to the places that have the highest risk so that we will try and build up the hard immunity.”

The minister, therefore, appealed to state governments to support their state ministries of health to effectively check the impending outbreak.

Earlier, the state commissioners for health in their statement of commitment towards combating the CSM read by the Anambra State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Amobi Ilika, committed themselves to providing the required leadership to deal with the looming epidemic.

The commissioners also said that they would ensure that public health and other laboratories were involved in the diagnosis and management of the disease.

http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art2009021223485071

Sad!