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  • 800,000 people commit suicide annually, says WHO

    No fewer than 800,000 people commit suicide annually, the World Health Organisation (WHO), has said.

    The world body identified suicide as the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 15 and 29 in 2016.

    It made the disclosure yesterday in a statement to mark the World Suicide Prevention Day.

    The global health agency said the common methods of suicide were hanging and firearms occurring in all countries and regions, whether rich or poor.

    It added, however, that most occurred in low and middle-income countries, which accounted almost four-fifths of global suicides in 2016.

    “In high-income countries, there is a well-established link between suicide and mental health issues such as depression and alcohol use disorders. But many suicides take place on an impulse during moments of crisis.”

    The UN health agencies estimated that a person died every 40 seconds by suicide and up to 25 times as many make a suicide attempt.

    To prevent suicides in communities, WHO and the Mental Health Commission of Canada released a toolkit.

    The toolkit outlined ways to prevent this serious public health problem, one of which is knowledge of the most commonly used methods, and restrictions of access to these methods.

    Other examples included policies to limit alcohol and drug abuse, effective mental health care, and follow-up care for attempted suicide cases.

    It estimated that the method used for 20 per cent of global suicides was pesticide self-poisoning, most of which occurred in rural agricultural areas in low- and middle-income countries.

    WHO explained that as well as the health sector, many sectors of society needed to be involved in preventing suicide, including education, labour, agriculture and the media.

    It said: “These actors all need to work together if they are to have an impact on this complex issue. People commit suicide at all times of their lives, and each one is a tragedy that affects families, communities and entire countries, and leaves behind long-lasting effects.”

    In many countries, suicide remained a taboo subject, WHO said, adding that this could prevent those who had attempted suicide from getting the help they needed.

    To date, only a few countries had included suicide prevention among their health priorities and only 38 countries have a national suicide prevention strategy, WHO said.

    World Suicide Prevention Day is an awareness day observed on September 10 every year to provide worldwide commitment and action to prevent suicides with various activities around the world since 2003.

  • Africa records high health improvement in new WHO report

    A new report by the World Health Organisation ( WHO ) Regional Office for Africa has shown a high improvement in health in the region.

    WHO, at the study, launched during the 68th session of the WHO Regional Committee in Dakar, provided a snapshot of the state of health in the African region.

    The report said life expectancy across Africa had improved significantly, but national health systems must be improved to ensure that services get to the people who need them most.

    Emerging data shows a continued improvement, with the continent seeing the biggest jump in healthy life expectancy – time spent in full health – anywhere in the world.

    The life expectancy jumped from 50.9 years in 2012, to 53.8 years in 2015, according to the report.

    Deaths resulting from the 10 biggest health risks in Africa – such as lower respiratory infections, HIV and diarrhoeal diseases – dropped by half between 2000 and 2015, partly as a result of specialised health programmes.

    Speaking at the launch of the report, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, said: “I’m proud that Africans are now living longer and healthier lives.

    “Nearly three years of extra health is a gift that makes us all proud. Of course we hope that these gains will continue and the region will reach global standards”.

    At the same time, the report warned that this achievement could only be sustained and expanded if health services are significantly improved.

    It stated that the performance of health systems in the region – measured by access to services, quality of care, community demand for services and resilience to outbreaks – was low.

    Chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer need to be tackled, with a person aged 30 to 70 in the region having a one in five chance of dying from a non-communicable disease.

    Two critical age groups – adolescents and the elderly – are being under-served, with surveys indicating a complete lack of elder care in a third of African countries.

    Moeti said: “Health services must keep up with the evolving health trends in the region. In the past we focused on specific diseases as these were causing a disproportionately high number of deaths.

    “We have been highly successful at stopping these threats, and people’s health is now being challenged by a broad range of conditions. We need to develop a new and more holistic approach to health.”

    This approach involves increasing spending on health, but also targeting funds in more effective ways, according to the report.

    The report suggested that health systems that perform well invest up to 40 per cent of their budgets on their workforce, and a third on infrastructure.

    WHO said, however, the report, which made specific recommendations for each of the countries of the region, and identifies areas where nations are demonstrating good practice, was not a scorecard.

    Algeria demonstrated good practice with its good coverage of available health service, Kenya has a good range of available essential services, and Mauritius has good access to services.

    By improving performance, the countries have a better chance of meeting their commitment to achieve health-related targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals, the report stated.

  • Vaccination on latest Ebola outbreak may start Wednesday – WHO

    The Ebola outbreak in Congo has been confirmed to be the Zaire strain of the virus and vaccinations of health workers may start on Wednesday, a senior official of the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

    Peter Salama, WHO Deputy Director for Emergency Preparedness and Response, gave the results of genetic sequencing in a tweet, saying that analysis showed it was a new outbreak in North Kivu province.

    He said: “We can start using rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine as early as tomorrow.”

    Reuters reported that the experimental vaccine, manufactured by Merck, proved successful during its first wide-scale usage against an outbreak of Zaire virus on the other side of Congo in the northwest.

    The Ebola outbreak was declared less than two weeks ago after killing 33.

    More than 3,000 doses remain in stock in the capital Kinshasa, allowing authorities to quickly deploy it to the affected areas near the Ugandan border.

    The vaccine normally needs to be kept at 80 degrees Celsius below freezing (minus 112 Fahrenheit), although it can be stored for a couple of weeks at just above freezing.

  • ‘Unsafe burial’ of woman triggered Ebola outbreak in DRC — WHO

    The death and unsafe burial of a 65-year-old woman in Mangina, Democratic

    Republic of Congo, was the critical event that set alarm bells ringing in the latest Ebola outbreak

    in late July, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

    WHO’s emergency response chief Peter Salama said seven of the woman’s immediate family later also died of Ebola-like symptoms, and potential cases were now being traced in 10 localities.

    Apart from Mangina in North Kivu province, there are now suspected cases in the local town of Beni and neighbouring Ituri province, Salama told a regular UN briefing in Geneva.

    The WHO also warned that the Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC has  likely spread over tens of kilometres  and poses a high regional risk given its proximity to borders,.

    The health ministry said four people have tested positive for Ebola in and around Mangina, a town of about 60,000 people in North Kivu province, 100 km from the Ugandan border.

    Another 20 people died from unidentified haemorrhagic fevers in the area, mostly in the second half of July.

    On July 29, a previous outbreak on the other side of the Central African country was declared over after killing 33 people.

    “It would appear that the risk, as we can surmise for DRC, is high. For the region, it’s high given the proximity to borders, particularly Uganda,” said WHO’s emergency response chief Peter Salama.

    “We are talking about tens of kilometres, but I stress that this is very preliminary information at this stage.”

    Ebola is believed to be transported long distances by bats and can find its way into bush meat sold at local markets and eaten. Once present in humans, it causes haemorrhagic fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and is spread through direct contact with body fluids.

    Over 11,300 people died of an epidemic in West Africa from 2013 to 2016.

    This is the vast, forested central African country’s 10th outbreak since 1976, when the virus was discovered near Congo’s Ebola river in the north.

  • TOYIN SARAKI: Why I advocate for women and children

    Toyin Saraki, wife of Nigeria’s senate president wears many caps; on the global stage, she’s a WHO Africa Regional Special Advisor. She is also a global goodwill ambassador to the International Confederation of Midwives and is founder and president of the Wellbeing Africa foundation. HANNAH OJO met the former Kwara State first lady at the 71st World Health Assembly in Geneva.

    Ever wondered how a personal tragedy thaws into a life time commitment? Ask Toyin Saraki.  At age 27, the former Kwara State first lady had a life-changing experience which changed her outlook on philanthropy.

    “I never in my life read the footnote of any book because all I had to do was read the book and absorb it and sail through life happily. On December 6, 1991, I gave birth three months prematurely.  I had twins, I lost one and I got married, all within the space of 24 hours. My previously lovely life suddenly collided with the footnotes of life. In that harrowing period, I really did experience what was never intended for me and I was most unprepared but what I experienced was an unavoidable reality for majority of the women in my country,” she said in a Ted talk hosted in the U.K that has been viewed by over 57, 000 people.

    As she survived that experience committing to help reduce maternal mortality, Mrs Saraki would later be confronted with two other jarring instances of life lost when she became the first lady of Kwara State. First was the death of Chinwe, the wife of the then Kwara State commissioner for health, who went into labour a month early while on a visit to her mother-in law’s place.

    Reliving the experience to an audience, she said: “She was taken to the nearest hospital where they didn’t have her health history. They were trying to get her health history from her and she was groaning with pain, so there was a life-changing delay of about 45 minutes.  In those 45 minutes, her baby became stuck in the traverse line. By the time they realised that she needed a caesarean, they couldn’t get the theatre open because somebody else has had a caesarean three hours earlier and the auxiliary nurses had cleaned the theatre, locked the door and closed for the day.  Chinwe died with her baby in her stomach.”

    From 2003 to 2011, when her husband was governor of Kwara State, one of the activities she enjoyed was going to the hospital to welcome babies born in the New Year. It was at one of such visits to a general hospital in Ilorin where she had gone to present gifts to the first baby of the year that she encountered another mother in tears.

    “I asked why she was crying and she said her baby needed a blood transfusion. I asked why the baby hadn’t been given a blood transfusion and they said they couldn’t get through the hospital with the blood bank. I dropped the first baby of the year and I carried the baby that needed the blood transfusion and I said, ‘let’s go’. As I was carrying this child, I suddenly felt a wetness. That was when I realised that people pass water when they die.”

    The child died in her arms and the first sign was the urination.

    Realising that the inadequacies of the Nigerian health system which manifest in lack of reliable information, the absence of an effective referral system and the deplorable attitude of health workers, are the reality for many Nigerian mothers, Saraki founded the Wellbeing Africa Foundation and her advocacy for maternal and child health became full blown, gaining recognition on the global stage.

    She was appointed as the global goodwill ambassador to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), an organisation which works closely with United Nations agencies in caring for mothers and newborns. It was while preparing for her address at the ICM event during the recently held World Health Assembly that The Nation ran into her in Geneva.  A strait-laced society woman who carries a sartorial grace, Saraki confessed to being honoured to be the voice and lens through which the world sees midwives and midwifery.

    “Midwifery is an unsung heroine of the medical world. Midwives are with mothers’ right from the point of pregnancy. They educate mums and see them through to safe deliveries.   If a woman has had the experience of a qualified midwife from the beginning to the end of the pregnancy and has attended ante-natal, she is by a huge margin more likely to have a safe delivery,” Saraki, said whilst emphasising that mid wives need to be properly remunerated since they give mother a better chance of safe delivery.

    With Nigeria’s grim index as the country with the second highest rate of maternal mortality around the world, Saraki believes inequality in Nigeria is most pronounced in child birth.  Does this mean she supports the argument of acknowledging the roles played by Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) in providing care for pregnant women during deliveries? She disagrees. “A TBA can never be a substitute for a properly qualified midwife,” she intoned firmly.

    “The way government has been training TBAs to be more hygienic is a welcome step, but it is not a substitute for trained and qualified midwives.  I would like to see a situation where TBAs, because they are there in the communities and the women are familiar with them, are paired with qualified midwives. I think that would actually be a wonderful situation,” she submitted.

    Asides her role in the international midwifery communication, Saraki also recently became a special advisor to the WHO Africa regional office. Her not-for-profit organisation, the Wellbeing Africa Foundation, also implements programmes tailored towards the three SDGs centred on good health and wellbeing, gender equality, and clean water and sanitation. She also has a role cut out for her as the wife of Nigeria’s senate president and it’s in this capacity that she canvasses for the implementation of the Abuja declaration where heads of state of the African Union countries met and pledged to set a target of allocating at least 15% of their annual budget to the health sector.

    Asked how the implementation of the Abuja declaration could impact Nigeria’s health sector, she responded: “The Abuja declaration actually started in 1978 with the Alma-Ata conference which declared universal healthcare should be available to all. A lot of countries have struggled with funding health care but the one message I’m taking to leaders is that health care is a performance indicator of democratic governance and if you do nothing else but to provide quality health care service for your citizens, that is the smartest investment you can make.  Leaders who provide healthcare for their citizens, win elections; it’s as simple as that!”

    Conscious of the nexus between universal health coverage and improvement of maternal and childhood care in Nigeria, Saraki, a U.K trained lawyer, has also been at the fore front of the Nigerian private sector primary health care revitalisation support group pushing for the one percent consolidated revenue to fund basic health care provision, opines that strengthening primary health would also strengthen the referral systems and get the right level of care to the right places.

    “It is really important to strengthen primary health because that is where you deal with non-communication diseases. That is where we should be spotting cancer in order to deal with it at the first point where it can easily be treated,” she said, decrying the fact that people often go to secondary health facilities to present primary health concerns.

    As an advocate of WASH, she’s keen on the theme of hygiene and medical facilities, especially with research revealing sepsis is on the rise, since only 29 percent of health facilities have clean running water.  She made a special case for this at the 71 WHA and impressed the point at a meeting with the DG of WHO, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus.

    “I think it is imperative that hygiene in health facilities should be an indicator of the strength or weakness of a national health care system. I look forward to that going into policy around the world. It’s as simple as everybody cleaning their hands with soap several times a day, particularly for health workers. My message is very simple; hand washing saves lives, clean hands saves lives.”

    In the area of early childhood development, one of her chief concerns is the low immunisation coverage in Nigeria. The National Immunization Coverage Survey (NICS) indicated that only 33 percent of children aged 12-23 months had three doses of pentavalent vaccine against the global target of 90 percent. During the WHO session on making a business case for vaccination, she made a case for Nigeria to be given a special category. She would later clarify her point to the reporter, saying her call is not for more Nigeria to be put in a special category of aids.

    “I’m asking for Nigeria to be put in a special category so that we can develop in-country, a very strong and vital strategy that addresses our needs.  If you look at our 35 percent vaccination coverage, you would assume that is the same in all parts of the country, it’s not! Some places have 75 percent coverage and some places are not reached at all, that is why we need to be in a special category.

    “As at the time when I had my experience on which the Ted talk was based, nobody thought about pregnancy and certainly nobody talked about losing children or still birth. You will just take your unfortunate situation, go and cry or pray.”

    She also emphasised the role of communication, saying: “communication allowed us to know that the country was in crisis where maternal and new born survival was concerned. I also think that communication can be community-ordered.

    “If you look at a country like Rwanda, they actually know in their parliament every time a woman dies in delivery. We need to get to that stage; it would actually be very good for that type of information to go in real time to the federal ministry of health,” she said.

    In keeping to her commitment of reducing maternal and infant mortality, her foundation pursues a respecting maternity care initiative which trains midwives, nurses and health workers on how to treat patients with dignity. The initiative was piloted in Kwara and it became the first state to pass the respectful maternity care charter.

    “I think not providing health care services is probably the biggest corruption of all. It is a crime to humanity,” she said, beaming a smile as she rises briskly to signify an end to the discussion.

    Born into privilege, Toyin is the daughter of industrialist parents who wielded influence in Nigeria’s business circle. Her father, Oloye Adekunle Ojora, hails from the Ojoro and Adele family.

    Recalling her childhood at the Ted talk in Euston, she said: “My parents always told me that I was so small when I was born that I made up for my lack of size by developing a loud voice and being very feisty and almost owning the space in which I was in despite being the smallest and the only girl.” There’s no doubting the fact that even on the global stage, she is owning the stage as far as maternal and child care is concerned.

  • WHO breaks new ground on excessive bleeding at childbirth

    The World Health Organisation ( WHO )in collaboration with Ferring and MSD for Mothers, has broken new ground that could help save the lives of thousands of women by preventing excessive bleeding after childbirth, otherwise called postpartum haemorrhage (PPH).

    Every year, 14 million women are affected by PPH. Although most deaths are preventable, PPH is the leading direct cause of maternal death worldwide, causing approximately 70,000 deaths per year. It remains a major cause of maternal death in Nigeria.

    Results from the largest study conducted in prevention of PPH with nearly 30,000 women, in Nigeria and nine other low and lower-middle income countries, by WHO were published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

    Titled ‘CHAMPION Clinical Trial’, the study obtained new data showing heat-stable carbetocin is as effective as oxytocin, the current standard of care, in preventing excessive bleeding following vaginal birth.

    Researched and developed by Ferring as a solution to address unmet needs in women’s health, heat-stable carbetocin remains effective at high temperatures, an answer to the limitation of oxytocin which must be stored and transported at 2 – 8°C.

    Studies in Nigeria and other developing countries have revealed degradation and loss of efficacy in oxytocin ampoules, which could be due to inadequate storage and distribution conditions, hence the need for the heat-stable carbetocin product.

    Data show that heat-stable carbetocin maintains effectiveness for at least three years at 30°C and six months at 40°C and has the potential to save thousands of women’s lives in Nigeria and other low- and lower-middle income countries, where 99% of PPH-related deaths occur and where the refrigeration of medicines can be difficult to achieve and maintain.

    The WHO publication concludes that the study should inform care in countries where cold-chain transport and storage of medicines is difficult to achieve and is a barrier to effective PPH prevention.

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    “This is an important step forwards in PPH prevention and these results pave the way for heat- stable carbetocin to potentially save the lives of thousands of women, especially in areas where cold-chain transport and storage is not feasible,” said Professor Klaus Dugi, Chief Medical Officer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals. “We will now work with the WHO and MSD for mothers to make heat- stable carbetocin available in countries where it is needed most, protecting women and families around the world.”

    The clinical study was conducted by the WHO Department of Reproductive Health and Research including the UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), using Ferring’s heat-stable carbetocin, and funded by MSD for Mothers.

    The Switzerland based pharmaceutical giant will now seek registrations and manufacture affordable heat-stable carbetocin and ensure it is available in the public sector of low- and lower-middle income countries that have a high burden of maternal mortality.

  • We are still at war with Ebola – WHO

    The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday cautioned against declaring victory too early in Congo’s Ebola epidemic, despite encouraging signs that it may be brought under control.

    “The outbreak is stabilising, but still the outbreak is not over,” WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told journalists on a visit to Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital Kinshasa.

    “We are still at war, and we need to continue to strengthen our surveillance and be very vigilant,” Reuters quoted the WHO chief as saying during the visit.

    WHO officials on Friday expressed cautious optimism that the epidemic was stabilising partly due to swift deployment of vaccines.

    But a day earlier, Congo’s health ministry reported its first confirmed case of Ebola in over a week, in the rural community of Iboko.

    Ghebreyesus said 2,200 people had been vaccinated, and that case management and tracing contacts of victims had gone well.

    He said: “It’s not over until it is over. Even if one case crosses into Congo (Republic) and gets to an urban area, that could trigger another epidemic.”

     

  • WHO launches global campaign to promote physical activity

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched a global campaign to promote physical activity among adolescents and adults as a strategy aimed at preventing and treating Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs).

    Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the organisation, while launching the programme on Tuesday in Abuja, said that the organisation would support countries’ efforts to ensure the success of the campaign.

    Ghebreyesus said the overall implementation of the “Global Action Plan on Physical Activity and Health 2018 to 2030’’ earlier launched was also critical.

    “We need leaders at all levels to help people to take the healthier step. This works best at city level, where most responsibility lies for creating healthier spaces.

    “Worldwide, one in five adults and four out of five adolescents aged 11 to 17 years do not do enough physical activity.

    “Girls, women, older adults, poor people, people with disabilities and chronic diseases, marginalised populations and indigenous people have fewer opportunities to be active.

    “When the recommended policies in the WHO Global Action Plan are adopted by countries, more active societies and opportunities for people of all ages and abilities will be created.

    “It would create the right ambience for people to do more walking, cycling, sport, active recreation, dance and play.

    “You do not need to be a professional athlete to choose to be active. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator makes a difference or walking.

    “Also, riding a bike instead of driving to your neighborhood bakery is recommended. It is the choices we make each time and every day that can keep us healthy,’’ he said.

    We reports that the campaign tagged “Let’s Be Active: Everyone, Everywhere, Everyday” encourages governments and authorities to make it easier for people to be more physically active in order to be healthier.

    The Global Action Plan is designed to bring global attention to the critical need for all to remain active in order to stay healthy.

    According to WHO, regular physical activity plays a crucial role in the prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, breast and colon cancer.

    WHO estimates that NCDs are responsible for 71 per cent of all deaths globally, including the death of 15 million people per year aged 30 to 70 years.

    The action plan recognised that in the modern world, staying active was becoming more of a challenge as cities and communities were not built or designed in the right way.

    It showed how countries could reduce physical inactivity in adults and adolescents by 15 per cent by 2030.

    WHO has recommended 20 policies, which when adopted by countries, would create more active environments.

    The thrust of the 20-point policy calls for support in the training of healthcare workers and other professionals, stronger data systems as well as the use of digital technologies.

    The organisation said physical inactivity was more than a health challenge as it had enormous financial implications for countries.

    WHO estimates that globally, physical inactivity costs countries about 54 billion dollars in direct health care of which 57 per cent is incurred by the public sector.

    The organisation further said that an additional 14 billion dollars was attributable to lost productivity.

    However, the third UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on NCDs fixed for Sept. 27, 2018 in New York, is expected to address issues around physical inactivity and other causes of NCDs and mental disorders.

  • Ebola: Medical workers in Congo finish vaccination

    Medical workers in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday concluded vaccination of Ebola patients in the city of Mbandaka with experimental vaccine, the health ministry said.

    Ebola spreads easily through bodily fluids and the medical strategy involves vaccinating all the people a patient may have infected and then vaccinating a second “ring” of contacts around each of those potential sufferers.

    That would include family members but also people who may have come into contact with a sufferer in church or on public transport, each a potential Ebola time-bomb who must be found and vaccinated by virus-hunting experts.

    The VSV-EBOV vaccine, developed by Merck, has been administered to 1,112 people, including 567 in the northwestern city.

    The ministry said that covers all known contacts of confirmed Ebola cases in the city as well as those people’s contacts.

    There have been no new deaths from Ebola since May 25 and the last confirmed case was recorded on May 29, although health officials say it is too soon to make any definitive pronouncements about the outbreak’s course.

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    The latest data from the health ministry shows 53 cases of Ebola in the outbreak, including 37 confirmed 13 probable and three suspected cases.

    One new suspected case was recorded on Monday in the rural community of Iboko and five suspected cases came back negative, the health ministry said.

    This is the ninth outbreak of Ebola in Congo since the disease was first detected in the country in 1976.

    Health officials have moved aggressively to head off a repeat of the 2013-16 outbreaks in West Africa that killed over 11,300 people.

    The vaccine was first rolled out in Mbandaka on May 21 and hailed as a paradigm shift in the fight against Ebola by the WHO.

    The WHO said on Friday that it was cautiously optimistic about the progress of the response yet Mbandaka’s location directly upstream the Congo River of the capital Kinshasa, a city of more than 10 million people, remains a concern.

    NAN

  • WHO begins campaign to eradicate yellow fever in Nigeria

    World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it has commenced campaign to eradicate Yellow fever in the country and has vaccinated two million people in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in Borno and surrounding communities.

    The programme, according to WHO, started in February.

    The WHO Communications Officer, Ms Charity Warigon, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja.

    She said the campaign, which would run through 2018, was aimed at vaccinating 25 million Nigerians in different parts of the country, while immunisation would continue in the coming years.

    She said the campaign was in response to yellow fever cases reported in the country when the first case was confirmed in 2017 in Kwara.

    According to her, 41 cases were confirmed in seven states and more than 1,700 suspected cases reported from all states in the country since that period.

    Warigon said the campaign was the largest ever yellow fever mass campaign in the country, adding that the programme was part of comprehensive strategy by WHO, United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to Eliminate Yellow Fever (EYE) in Africa by 2026.

    She said: “In Borno where millions of people are in need of humanitarian assistance, no case of yellow fever has been confirmed so far.

    “The presumptive positive case of the disease however highlighted the importance of protecting the highly vulnerable population against yellow fever in this extremely fragile area.

    “Since humanitarian crisis unfolded in the North East following the Boko Haram insurgency in the region, Borno has been bedevilled with problems.”

    NAN