The Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), Dr. Jide Idris, stated on Wednesday that it is considering declaring a state of emergency on cholera if cases recorded go beyond manageable threshold.
Olajide spoke in Lagos during the Adetokunbo Alakija Memorial Travel Medicine Lecture held at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, organised by the Nigerian Society of Travel Medicine.
He maintained that based on the data that would be obtained from all the partners involved in the assessment, “if they look at the data and they decide that the situation has gone beyond a particular threshold, then we call it an emergency situation.”
He said the agency was still awaiting reports from the team conducting the investigation.
“So when they come, when they bring the data, if it has gone beyond a particular threshold, we declare an emergency,” he added.
As Nigeria battles a cholera outbreak in 30 states, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the International Organisation for Migration held an emergency meeting in Lagos on Tuesday. The WHO Country Representative, Dr. Walter Mulombo, disclosed this on his X handle.
The NCDC, in its recent report, said from January 1 to June 11, 2024, over 1,141 suspected and over 65 confirmed cases of cholera, resulting in over 30 deaths, have been reported from 96 LGAs in 30 states.
Amid this, the Lagos State Ministry of Health said it has recorded 350 suspected cases of cholera in 29 wards across multiple LGAs, with 17 confirmed cases and 15 fatalities attributed to severe dehydration caused by delayed presentation.
After delivering his address on the theme ‘Collaborative Platforms and Networks: Strengthening Travel Medicine in Nigeria,’ Dr. Olajide, while responding to a question from our correspondent for an update on the cholera outbreak, said the agency has been conducting a risk assessment.
He said, “We have been tracking cholera cases, and we are documenting them. For the last two or three weeks, the incidence shot up, with a rising number of deaths, and that is why we started investigating, and this is where Lagos State came in.”
He, however, warned that prevention and preparation were key to tackling such a disease outbreak.
“We must prepare; prevention means creating the facilities that you will need, the isolation centres, and looking at the human resources you have.”
On her part, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s Special Adviser on Health, Kemi Ogunyemi, said cholera had much to do with the environment, and the Ministry of Health had to work with environmental agencies to address the menace.
She said, “It’s all about the environment; it’s about water; it’s about what you eat; it’s about people defecating; and all that is flushed into the drainage system. It’s not just the Ministry of Health; we cannot work in isolation, and we are trying our best. We have programmes called Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene know as WASH. We are trying to get clean water into all areas; we are looking at pipes that are broken and things that are not working, etc.”
She urged people to also take individual responsibility by maintaining personal hygiene.
