Nigeria tops the list of countries with far too many children – 20.8 million – still missing their first measles vaccine dose. According to a new report published by leading health organisations, more than half of 20.8 million unvaccinated children live in six countries: Nigeria (3.3 million), India (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.0 million), Indonesia (1.2 million), Ethiopia (0.9 million), and Democratic Republic of the Congo (0.7 million).
The health organisations include: the Measles and Rubella Initiative (MR&I), the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Foundation, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The latest data is published in WHO Weekly Epidemiological Report and in CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. According to the report, despite 84 per cent drop in deaths caused by measles in 16 years, not less than 90,000 people died of the disease last year. “In 2016, an estimated 90,000 people died from measles – an 84 per cent drop from more than 550,000 deaths in 2000. This marks the first time global measles deaths have fallen below 100,000 per year.”
According to the report, since measles is a highly contagious viral disease, large outbreaks continue to occur in these and other countries in Europe and North America, putting children at risk of severe health complications such as pneumonia, diarrhea, encephalitis, blindness, and death.
To address this anomaly in Nigeria and protect more children as the country approaches the peak period of measles infection, the Federal Government, through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), plans to begin a nationwide measles immunization campaign next week. Dry season, between November and March, is the peak period for the measles epidemic.
Meanwhile, the federal government says that, in partnership with the World Diabetes Federation (WDF), it has established about 390 diabetes clinics in different parts of the country to address the growing problem of diabetes, which experts say, has assumed an epidemic proportion in Nigeria and other developing countries.
In a speech to formally declare open the maiden edition of Sanofi Diabetes Summit in Lagos, the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, who made this known, also announced that the government now has 175 clinics in place which are providing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) care and another 60 clinics providing Diabetes/TB care in the country.
The Minister, who was represented by the Chief Medical Director of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Prof. Chris Bode in his paper entitled ’The Emerging Epidemic of Diabetes Mellitus: A Call to Action,” decried the increasing incidence of diabetes worldwide.
Prof. Adewole declared that there are five million deaths from diabetes and diabetes-related causes yearly while every 10 seconds, a limb is amputated due to diabetes as the disease has become the most common cause of lower extremity amputation. In his words, “From 100 million in1994 there are now 415 million people affected and projections for the future put the prevalence in 2030 at 642 million, most of the increase coming from Africa and Asia. Currently, there are about 15 million diabetics in Africa and a quarter of this number resides in Nigeria. One in every 11 adults has diabetes and up to half of these are not diagnosed. Less than 10 percent of people diagnosed with diabetes meet the targets of metabolic control”.
The Minister lamented that people with diabetes often have shortened lifespan and 80% of them die of cardiovascular complications ranging from stroke, myocardial infarction, heart or kidney failure to foot gangrene. “Unfortunately many of these lives are lost at the peak of their prime in the fifth or sixth decade of lives with the attendant devastating effect on the family unit or the nation as a whole,” he said.
He also pointed out that diabetes remains one of the costliest conditions to treat with expenses for some of the complications running into millions of naira per patient suffering from kidney failure, stroke, foot gangrene, heart disease and retinopathy.
Seeing the magnitude of the diabetes problem in the country, the Minister told the summit that the Federal Ministry of Health had created a center for Non-Communicable Diseases, complete with staff and other resources along with a Diabetes Desk Officer.
