From ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
Bauchi state government has said that following the outbreak of yellow fever in the state which led to the death of eight people, it will soon embark on massive vaccination to 19 local government areas of the state.
The Commissioner of Health, Bauchi state, Dr. Aliyu Maigoro, disclosed this in an interview with journalists in Bauchi.
He said that communities in Alkaleri LGA were last year vaccinated following the outbreak last year “but because of this outbreak, we are bringing this plan from February next year to December.”
He pointed out that the government has only 10,000 vaccines which it had kept for such outbreaks pointing out that the government had contacted the NCDC for assistance.
“We are hoping to get support from the NCDC, we’ve notified them accordingly and they tested the results so they are aware of the positive cases in Bauchi. Once we get this support, we’re going to full yellow fever vaccination to all the 19 LGAs.
“Currently, we have only 10,000 vaccines that are currently on ground which we had kept in case of this kind of emergency. We’ll start the vaccination with the population around the places where these cases were recorded.
“As we get more support from the NCDC from the state government, since the governor is ready to support the Primary Health Care Development Agency because they are responsible for the vaccination, to see that we go to Communities in Ganjuwa,” he stated.
Maigoro said that eight cases had been confirmed while the samples of 41 people have been taken and sent to the National Center for Disease Control, Abuja for testing to ascertain if they are yellow fever cases besides the eight cases already confirmed.
He said: “Currently, we have taken samples of 41 members of that community and we are taking it to Abuja for testing to see if it is yellow fever.
“After this active search, we are developing our mitigation plans whereby we will liase with the local government officials for massive vaccination.
“All the communities involved and those not also involved that are around those communities will be vaccinated for yellow fever. Yellow fever has no cure but it has vaccination.
“What we are doing currently is active search, we have to isolate people that are having the symptoms. Once a member of a community is desolating the symptoms, we take their samples and sent it to Abuja for testing.”
He appealed to parents allow their children to be immunized against the killer disease saying “if every child will be vaccinated at the nine months for measles and yellow fever, in the next years, you will not have these diseases.”
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