Diphtheria and the challenge to health educators out there, by Anna Gabriel Yarima
I write to and call and throw a challenge at all graduated health educators and the potential ones concerning the deadly diphtheria disease that annually claims the huge number of lives of infected Nigerians, which, according to reports, is more than 1,376 deaths being recorded in the high-burden states infected with the cases: Kano, Yobe, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno, and Kaduna states. And, from around 2022 to 2023, WHO reported that over 600 deaths were recorded with a case fatality ratio of 13% among confirmed cases in the past.
Instead of the cases significantly dropping annually, on 14th January 2024, according to the WHO African Region Health Emergency Situation Report, “A cumulative total of 27,991 suspected cases of diphtheria resulting in 828 fatalities have been reported across Nigeria, Guinea, Niger, Mauritania, and South Africa. Nigeria is the most severely affected, accounting for 80.1% of cases and 72% of deaths.” Even though the cases in Nigeria are underreported.
The deadly diphtheria that is caused by exotoxin-producing Corynebacterium diphtheriae is spread between people mainly by direct contact or through the air via viral respiratory droplets. The disease can affect all age groups; however, unimmunised children are particularly at risk.
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Therefore, avenues for an awareness have to be created by the health educators in our communities so as to make parents ’fully informed of the signs and symptoms of the disease as well as the dangers of being infected and how easily uninfected children could be infected. Though vaccine-preventable it is!
The government at all levels has to be very cautious in attacking the deadly diphtheria that consumes lives annually. I therefore suggest the federal government collaborate with primary health care centres across the nation so as to have unimmunised children who are at risk immunised.
I hope the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare will put more effort into making sure that the number of cases and deaths that are recorded annually are reduced or totally diminished.
Anna Gabriel Yarima is a student of Mass Communication at the Muhammadu Buhari University of Maiduguri (formerly University of Maiduguri), Borno State.
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