Nigeria Accounts For 25% of Africa’s Tropical Disease Burden

The Nigeria 2012 Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) master plan has indicated that the country accounts for 25 percent of the seven major NTDs in sub-saharan Africa, holding the largest burden on the African continent.

Addressing journalists in Lagos at the just concluded launch of the Nigeria NTD steering committee, the Director, Head, NTDs Federal Ministry of Health, Mrs Ifeoma Anagbogu, said, “the COUNTDOWN project was created to find new evidence on new ways of working to call time on NTDs and strive to ending the disease by 2020.

“With five year of DFID funding initiative from 2014. We are working with NTD researchers, policy makers, practitioners and research specialists from Nigeria, United Kingdom and United States of America to find areas of key advancement in NTD control.”

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Anagbogu said the project came at a time when Nigeria is putting all measures to achieve the year 2020 target for the elimination of NTDs as a public health problem adding that the Federal government is delighted to collaborate with COUNTDOWN team in fast-tracking the attainment target through implementation research.

In his comment,the Director of COUNTDOWN programme, Professor Russell Stothard, said the aim of the forthcoming research partnership is to asist in the scale- up and optimization of current as well as future interventions against NTDs.

He further said the mission is to reduce significantly the suffering of those with disability and disease, and that COUNTDOWN will foster, develop effective actions across the health system, not only here in Nigeria but also elsewhere in sub-saharan Africa to end NTD pandemic.

In her opinion, the Chairperson of the steering committee on NTDs, Prof Adenike Abiose, stated some of the NTDs of concern; Onchocerciasis (River blindness), Schistosomiasis (Blood in the urine), Lymphatic Flariasis (Elephantiasis), Trachoma (Blindness) and Intestinal worm adding that Nigeria is to scale up intervention against NTDs in Kaduna and Ogun state.

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