1st December, 2021
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, on Wednesday disclosed that cholera has killed 3,600 Nigerians in the 11 months.
Director-General, NCDC, Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, disclosed this in a interview on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily.
Between February 2020 and November 2021, COVID-19 has killed 2,977. This is a period of 21 months.
“Sadly, cholera has actually killed more people than COVID so far. We have had I think a little over 3,600 deaths from cholera for the period of the year under review – the beginning of the year (2021) to date,” Adetifa said.
“I will like to reassure the public that while all of the public attention is on COVID, the NCDC is joggling several balls in terms of the other priority diseases of public health importance and we are responding to all of them.
“So, the talk is about COVID, and nobody knows that we have teams out in about five, six states now helping with Cholera response,” he added.
According to him, “We’ve had rapid response teams in all of the states that have had cholera outbreaks. We have incident managers for Lassa fever that respond to cases that are reported, we are currently preparing for the meningitis season – the refresher training, the sensitisation.
“We would like all of these areas to receive equal or even more attention, but we have no choice but to focus on all of the diseases that are likely to have public health impact on the country according to the mandate that we have been given.”