Katsina confirms cholera outbreak, says situation under control

The Katsina government has confirmed the outbreak of cholera in some LGAs in the state.

Shamsuddeen Yahaya, executive secretary, Katsina State Primary Health Care Development Agency (PHCDA), disclosed this on Wednesday.

Yahaya did not state the affected LGAs and the number of victims but said the state government had taken necessary measures to prevent the further spread of the bacterial disease.

He explained that the state government had provided adequate preventive facilities to be distributed across the 34 LGAs in the state.

According to data released by the NCDC, 18 states and the FCT have reported cholera cases since the beginning of 2021.

The outbreak hit an all-time high in July, killing over 441 people in the month —  according to a report by SB Morgan (SBM) Intelligence.

Yahaya blamed the outbreak on poor personal and environmental hygiene while calling on residents of the state to improve their hygiene practices.

“We also do what we call outbreak response, wherever we have the information that there is an outbreak, we quickly go there and provide drugs,” Yahaya said.

“Drugs have been pre-positioned in the affected areas, there are drugs for case management, we have to do that. And in every LGA, we have a structure where we have disease surveillance and notification officers.

“These disease surveillance and notification officers are the people that coordinate all the activities that have to do with disease outbreak response,” he said.

“Under surveillance, we have what is called active case and contact search in the affected areas. Because, when you see one case, it means another is hiding.

“We have laboratories where we conduct laboratory diagnosis of not only cholera, but other diseases that cause diarrhea; we have all the necessary facilities to carry out our work perfectly.”

Last week, the NCDC said it recorded a decrease in the number of reported cases of cholera in the country.

The agency added that the emergency operations centres will continue to coordinate a national response to the epidemic.