There have been 1,534 confirmed cases of diphtheria in Nigeria, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
4,160 suspected cases have reportedly been recorded nationwide from 139 Local Government Areas in 27 states, according to the NCDC.
This was stated in the NCDC’s website-published diphtheria situation report for the period of May 2022 to July 2023.
56 LGAs in Kano (1,207 instances), Yobe (252 cases), Bauchi (41 cases), Katsina (nine cases), Lagos (8 cases), FCT (6 cases), and Kaduna (5 cases) were home to the confirmed cases.
There are another two each in Niger, Gombe, Osun, Jigawa, and Cross River.
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The report noted that Kano (3,233), Yobe (477), Katsina (132), Kaduna (101), Bauchi (54), FCT (41) and Lagos (30) account for 97.8 per cent of the suspected cases.
The report partly read, “Of the 4,160 suspected cases reported, 1,534 (36.9 per cent) were confirmed (87 lab-confirmed; 158 epid linked; 1,289 clinically compatible), 1,700 (40.9 per cent) were discarded, 639 (15.4 per cent )are pending classification and 287 (6.9 per cent) unknown.
“The confirmed cases were distributed across 56 LGAs in 10 states. The majority [1,018 (66.4 per cent)] of the confirmed cases occurred in children aged one to 14 years.
“A total of 137 deaths were recorded among all confirmed cases (CFR: 8.9 per cent). Out of the 1,534 confirmed cases reported, 1,257 (81.9 per cent) were not fully vaccinated against diphtheria.”
Diphtheria caused by a toxin produced by the bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae, is a vaccine-preventable disease covered by one of the vaccines provided routinely through Nigeria’s childhood immunisation schedule.
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