Mobile emergency coordinator, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Sham’un Abubakar, has said the non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the Kebbi State ministry of health and other development partners, is targeting over 500,000 people for meningitis vaccination in the state.

He disclosed this on Wednesday during a visit to the worst-hit local government areas of Gwandu, Aliero and Jega.

The Kebbi State Government declared a meningitis outbreak in March after laboratory tests confirmed positive cases.

The outbreak resulted in several fatalities, including among students at the State University of Science and Technology, Aliero.

Cerebrospinal meningitis is a severe infection that causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord’s protective membranes.

Its common symptoms include fever, headache, neck stiffness and sensitivity to light.

To combat it, prompt treatment is crucial to prevent serious complications or deaths.

The coordinator is currently in Kebbi State to support the meningitis outbreak response.

Mr Abubakar recalled that they started treating people infected with meningitis in three LGAs in March, adding, “We have so far treated about 1,531 patients who presented themselves to the isolation centres. The case fatality rate, which is the number of people who died out of the number of people admitted and treated, is around seven per cent. Another activity we are currently doing closely with the ministry of health’s staff and other partners such as WHO, UNICEF and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency is a vaccination campaign in the worst-hit local government areas. In these LGAs, we are earmarking to vaccinate around 513,051 people within the period of seven to eight days, which is currently ongoing; we have visited some of these centres, working together with different people.”

The coordinator said the MSF team was in Kebbi in collaboration with other partners to come up with a strategy to respond to the meningitis outbreak.

He added that they also used the opportunity to provide vaccination for other potential outbreaks such as measles, especially to children from one to five years old.

He noed, “Even now, we have reported cases of measles in eight LGAs of Kebbi State. That’s why we include measles vaccination for children between one and five years old, but for meningitis we are vaccinating those from one to 29 years. We want to see as many children as possible vaccinated. Also, we are working closely with the state ministry of health in existing facilities where they do routine immunisation. This is to see that other anti-genes for vaccination have been given during this intensive period of vaccination. So that meningitis can be prevented or slowed down and other diseases that have the potential for outbreaks are also prevented.”

According to him, the MSF, alongside the ministry of health and other collaborating partners, were going round supervising all the 429 vaccination sites within the three LGAs.

This is to ensure that the quality of the campaign achieved the desired results.

 The coordinator added that MSF had also recruited more staff from its side who were doing case management in all three facilities.

He, however, expressed delight that the cases were reducing as most of the isolation centres were gradually becoming empty.

On the root cause of the recurring meningitis outbreak, Mr Abubakar attributed it to Nigeria’s position, especially the 19 northern states situated on the meningitis belt.

He added that the belt stretched over 21 countries in the central, western and eastern parts of Africa.

Mr Abubakar stated, “It started from Ethiopia up to Mali and all the 19 states in Northern Nigeria are part of this meningitis belt. The bacterium that causes meningitis is carried by human beings because human beings are the only reservoir of this bacteria. Only 10 per cent of people globally carry this bacterium and when there are factors that can lead to them being infected, they spread it through respiratory droplets.’’

(NAN)