Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, on Wednesday said his ministry was tracking four major diseases outbreaks. He made the disclosure in a chat with state house correspondents.
“Council received the weekly report on the state of public health in Nigeria and we did inform council about four major outbreaks that we are currently tracking.
“One is Lassa Fever and we are quite happy that there is a major decline in a number of reported cases. We have also not reported any deaths in the last two weeks but we still have two cases reported from Edo last week.
“We still have cholera in some parts of the country, particularly in Kano, Kebbi, Borno and Zamfara but the outbreak in Borno state is the most significant of all of them.
“So far since the outbreak started we have recorded 2,719 suspected cases of cholera and we reported 51 deaths in total.
“We have started cholera vaccination in Borno state as a way of stemming the tide”, he said.
The Minister added that the ministry informed FEC about one reported case of yellow fever in Kwara, adding that public health and surveillance officers were deployed to the state to access the situation with a view to commencing immunisation.
He, however, added that the government was trying to change in a transformational way the narrative in the health sector.
“Over the years we have spent 80 per cent of our budget on curative services and that is not really what we are supposed to do.
“We really need to move in the direction of prevention services and when you look at our budget we are moving more of our budget to preventive care, more money to immunization.
“Because when you immunize our children they will not develop measles, cholera or the things that will make them to die.”
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