The World Health Organization, WHO, says out of Nigeria’s population of around two hundred million people, one hundred and sixty million are at risk of yellow fever, making up around twenty-five percent of all the people at risk in Africa.
According to the Medical Officer for the World Health Organization, Nigeria, Dr Anne Jean Baptiste, yellow fever is a virus transmitted by infected mosquitoes, and it is dangerous because a small percentage of patients will go through a more toxic phase of the disease, as they will experience fever, have system failure, mainly in the kidney and liver.
She said half of the patients may die within seven to ten days after experiencing bleeding from the mouth, nose and eyes.
The Director General of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, said the center has strengthened surveillance considerably by having reference laboratories in the country that have been retooled to meet all the performance parameters.
According to the NCDC boss, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the center has given out over sixty-six million doses in 2020 and 2021 to protect people from yellow fever outbreaks, saying that the achievement was possible through routine immunization, as well as mass vaccination campaigns that identify gaps in the population and proactively target vulnerable communities.
Home to some of the world’s most densely populated cities, Nigeria is at risk of both urban and sylvatic exposure to the disease.
In 2017, there was a resurgence in yellow fever in Nigeria after fifteen years due to gaps in detection of the disease.
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