Meningitis: Agency Sets Up Response Team In FCT
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Primary Health Care Development Board says it has constituted a Rapid Respond Team to tackle the outbreak of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) in Abuja.
The Executive Secretary of the board, Dr Rilwanu Mohammed, made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview in Abuja on Tuesday.
NAN reports that six people had died of suspected CSM in Abuja Municipal and Bwari Area Councils of FCT last week.
Mohammed explained that the team had been given the tasks to plan and coordinate surveillance and epidemic response activities as well as mobilisation of resources.
He said that the committee was also charged with responsibility to monitor and evaluate response interventions during outbreaks including dissemination of information to the public.
According to him, the team would coordinate post epidemic evaluation, review response plans and provide feedbacks through monthly review meeting.
The scibe noted that the 18-man committee would be headed by Mrs Odey Alice-Achu, the Acting Secretary, Health and Human Services.
Mohammed said that FCT had recorded six deaths out of eight suspected cases of CSM reported in Abuja since the outbreak last week.
He said that 70,000 doses of vaccines had so far been used to immunise some residents of Abuja within one to 29 years of age.
The executive secretary decried inadequate vaccines to immunise residents within the age of vaccination against meningitis.
He disclosed that the little additional vaccines he received would be used to vaccinate the most risk places like inmates in the prison, IDPs and some boarding students in the FCT. (NAN)
