No fewer than 500,000 people are expected to benefit from meningitis vaccination in Kebbi State, jointly bankrolled by the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in collaboration with the State Ministry of Health and other development partners.
Mobile Emergency Coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Dr Sham’un Abubakar, disclosed this in an interview yesterday during a visit to the worst-hit local government areas of Gwandu, Aliero and Jega.
The Kebbi Government bad declared a meningitis outbreak in March after laboratory tests confirmed positive cases.
The outbreak resulted in several fatalities, including students of the State University of Science and Technology, Aliero.
Cerebrospinal meningitis is a severe infection that causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord’s protective membranes.
Its common symptoms include: Fever, headache, neck stiffness and sensitivity to light.
To combat it, prompt treatment is crucial to prevent serious complications or deaths.
The coordinator is currently in Kebbi to support the meningitis outbreak response.
Abubakar recalled that they started treating people infected with meningitis in three LGAs in March, adding, “we have so far treated about 1,531 patients who presented themselves to the isolation centres.
“The case fatality rate, that’s the number of people who died out of the number of people admitted and treated, is around seven per cent.
“Another activity we are currently doing closely with the Ministry of Health’s staff and other partners like WHO, UNICEF and National Primary Healthcare Development Agency is a vaccination campaign in the worse hit Local Government Areas.
“In these LGAs, we are earmarking to vaccinate around 513,051 people within the period of seven to eight days which is currently ongoing, we have visited some of these centres working together with different people.”
The coordinator said MSF team was in Kebbi in collaboration with other partners to come up with a strategy to respond to the meningitis outbreak.
He added that they also used the opportunity to provide vaccination for other potential outbreak like measles especially to children from one to five years.
“Even now, we have reported cases of measles in eight LGAs of Kebbi, that’s why we include measles vaccination for children between one and five years but for meningitis we are vaccinating those from one to 29 years.
“We want to see as many children as possible vaccinated, also, we are working closely with the state ministry of health in existing facilities where they do routine immunisation.
“This is to see that all other anti-genes for vaccination have been given during this intensive period of vaccination.
“So that meningitis can be prevented or slowed down and also other diseases that have potential for outbreaks are also prevented,” he said.
According to him, the MSF alongside ministry of health and other collaborating partners were going round supervising all the 429 vaccination sites within the three LGAs.