As part of efforts to contain the diphtheria outbreak in Katsina, the government says it has vaccinated 150,346 people within five days
The Chief Press Secretary to the Katsina State Governor, Ibrahim Kaula Mohammed, disclosed this in a statement on Monday.
According to him, the emergency vaccination campaign, which commenced on August 25, is being conducted in 15 high-risk wards across Bakori, Charanchi, Funtua, Mashi and Kankia Local Government Areas of the state.
He explained that, 99,036 persons aged between five and 15 years received the Tetanus-Diphtheria (Td) vaccine, while 51,310 children were administered the Pentavalent vaccine.
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He added that the intervention followed the spread of suspected diphtheria cases across 29 of the state”s 34 local government areas, with Funtua recording the highest number of cases.
The campaign, according to the statement, targets 114,570 children aged six months to five years for Pentavalent vaccination and 146,075 persons aged five to 15 years for the the vaccine and that the state government had also secured an additional 650,000 doses of diphtheria-containing vaccines to expand the exercise to other affected and high-risk communities.
The statement also revealed that three additional isolation centres had been established to complement the NCDC-supported facility at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Katsina and that, surveillance, contact tracing, case management and community mobilisation are ongoing in collaboration with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and development partners.