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The Yobe State Commissioner Ministry of Health and Human Services, Dr Mohammed Lawan Gana has disputed the rumour that there is a new disease killing people in Potiskum and Nangere local government areas in the state.
Gana was reacting to social media reports that there was an outbreak of a new disease in Potiskum and Nangere local government area which killed about 200 youths in a short period.
The commissioner said Yobe State has functional and robust health structures and surveillance mechanisms that track both existing and new diseases or ailment across all the 178 political wards of the state.
He said despite the structures, health experts and professionals did not hesitate to embark on a proper investigation to ascertain the authenticity of the insinuation but nothing new apart from the known Cerebrospinal meningitis type ‘C’ disease which Yobe battled with and contained its spread through vaccinations and other efforts was discovered.
He said: “It was brought to the notice of the ministry about the social media rumour that has gone around about the death of about 200 youths in Potiskum and Nangere in the last two weeks, and was associated with ‘Strange illness’.
“The Yobe State Ministry of Health, before we confirm anything we usually do our diligence to ensure that whatever we say is not only the facts but accurate.
“Upon receiving the report, we mandated the state epidemiologists supervised by the state director of public health who are responsible for management and control of all outbreaks in the state.
“The first thing they did was to contact the local government health teams. That’s the structure set in place by the ministry which is functional. Our directors of Primary Health Cares and their teams were contacted but all of them could not find anything like that.
“In the course of their investigation, they contacted all ward focal persons and facility managers because in each of the 178 political wards of the state we have what we called ward Primary Health Care managers and ward focal persons and all of them confirmed that there is no new ailment as reported.
“Secondly, with the support of our partners, Yobe has a robust surveillance structure and the surveillance is designed in such a way that it is very sensitive to the extent that if there is any unusual occurrence in the community it is immediately reported to the disease surveillance officers at the local government level who also send the report to the state level of the structure immediately who then draw the attention of the epidemiologist for action.
“All of our Primary Healthcare Centres facilities who are close to the communities confirmed to us that there is nothing of such nature and whenever there is health related problem, our PHCs are always the first people to know and they report it to the appropriate laid down structures for action.
“Fourthly, because of the current cerebrospinal meningitis outbreak, we have over 200 community health influencers, promoters and supporters who are spread across Potiskum and Fika local governments. We also have 178 active search teams who go from house to house to look for cases and then link them to any available health facility.
“We also have 130 teams with support from the WHO, over 1000 voluntary community mobilizers which are supported by UNICEF, 1800 community informants across the state and all of them did not report any unusual disease.”
The commissioner disclosed that from December last year, the state started recording unusual cerebrospinal meningitis type ‘C’ outbreak with 2, 510 cases out of which 85 cases resulted in death.
He added that an investigation revealed that all of the deaths recorded were a result of either not reporting to a health facility or reporting late, hence the deaths.
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