The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHDA) yesterday disclosed that 2.832 million doses of vaccines are being imported to combat the outbreak of deadly Cerebral Spinal Meningitis (CSM).
Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr Faisal Shuaibu, said the vaccines would be delivered from the United Kingdom and India.
Shuaibu who was represented by the Director of Community Health in the agency, Dr. Emmanuel Odu stated these yesterday in Abuja, while explaining NPHDA’s efforts to stamp-out the scourge, before the House of Representatives committee on Health Services.
This is just as the committee questioned the attitude of relevant agencies in the nation’s health sector toward health emergencies
Odu in his reposnse to the committee’s inquiry said ; “We have reached out to the International Contact Group which has approved the supply of another 2million doses to be brought in for distribution. The vaccines are not things that are given freely, and that’s why we had issues of inadequate stock to confront the situation as soon as it occurred, and we are in Zamfara as we speak to carry out the vaccination.”
“We’re expecting 823,000 doses from the UK any moment from now and that will be delivered to the affected states. We have made contacts with the company that manufactures the Type C vaccines in India for 2 million doses to be delivered to us,” he said.
He also stated that the agency had already disbursed 500,000 vaccines to the affected states and that the distribution commenced in Zamfara State yesterday.
Odu added that; “spinal meningitis has been with us for years, however, what we have now is a bit different from what we are used to. The strain now is a stereotype C, however, we were used to having the type A which based on our effort was virtually eliminated.”
Representative of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. John Oladejo while briefing the committee disclosed that the current situation had not been experienced before. Adding the outbreak spread very quickly due to inadequate resources to tackle it.
Oladejo said the vaccines involved are expensive and restrictive.
“At the Centre, we have reached out to our partners and we are working with a group of experts also known as the ‘International Response Group’ which has approved the release of about 2 million doses of vaccine to be brought in for administration,” he stated.
We are also working to carry out surveillance. We also have a communication system which is already at work, and officials are mandated to detect early cases of meningitis, passing distribution and supply of needed materials to work, responding to the outbreak and then bringing down the number of cases.
“We assure you that in the very shortest possible time, we will be recording zero cases as our men are fully deployed on active surveillance to detect new cases while we deal with existing ones”, he said.