Posted by About 15,060 instances of suspected diphtheria infections were registered in the country as of October 19, 2023, according to the Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Ifedayo Adetifa.
He went on to say that a total of 9,478 were verified across 137 LGAs in 20 states and the FCT of Abuja.
At a press conference on Thursday in Abuja, he said that 71.5% of the verified cases involved children between the ages of one and fourteen, while fewer than 1% involved infants.
According to Adetifa, there are 7,747 instances reported in Kano and 841 in Yobe.
“Bauchi State recorded 369 infections, followed by Katsina with 275, Borno with 164, Jigawa with 24, Kaduna with 18, Lagos with eight, Zamfara with seven, the Federal Capital Territory with seven, Gombe with five, Sokoto with four, Osun with three, and Niger State with two cases,” he continued.
One case of diphtheria was reported in the states of Cross River, Enugu, Imo, Nasarawa, Kebbi, and Taraba, according to the Director-General.
At the briefing, Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, reported that the Pentavalent vaccine, a crucial protection against this disease, had been given to 1,692,762 children aged six months to four years.
He also mentioned that an astonishing 3,166,419 kids between the ages of 4 and 14 had received the TD vaccines, protecting the country even more from the disease.
He detailed how the second round of the epidemic response involving diphtheria vaccines began on September 23 across seven states, including 56 LGAs severely affected by the outbreak.
During phase two, he said, 1,111,310 children in Kano State were vaccinated with TD vaccines and 544,737 children were vaccinated with Pentavalent vaccines, demonstrating the state’s dedication to the cause. Similarly, in Katsina, another epicenter of the outbreak, 403,252 children were vaccinated with TD vaccines and 255,075 children were vaccinated with Pentavalent vaccines.
Hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been saved thanks to concerted immunization campaigns in the states of Kaduna, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, and Yobes, as he claims.