Jigawa CSOs Begin Enlightenment On Diphtheria Outbreak

In a bid to boost the war against diphtheria outbreak and spread to other parts of Jigawa State, a coalition known as Community Health Promoters Group (CHPG) has commenced a massive door-to-door public campaign on the prevention, control and management of the disease.

At a special training to build the capacity of its members on the dissemination of quality health information in Hadejia, the chief convener of the workshop and executive director of ILE, Comrade Idris Haruna Kalli, said after the training, the participants would go back and engage their communities on the essence of the campaign.

He said the CSOs deem it necessary to intensify public campaign on immunisation, promoting public healthcare service and personal/environmental hygiene to tackle the outbreak.

Haruna charged the participants from eight local government areas of the state to pay attention to the training as they are expected to cascade it to  others towards achieving the desired goal of reducing preventable child death in the state.

In his remarks the representative of the state Primary Healthcare Agency, the health promoter officer of Hadejia local government area, Malam Abdullahi expressed appreciation to the CSOs for complementing the efforts of the state government in fighting diphtheria and other child-killer diseases.

He said with a full dose of immunisation, a child could have 90 percent immunity against these diseases, saying it was therefore a welcome development for civil society to redouble their efforts in promoting health information and passing it down to the grassroots.

“With proper dissemination of information to the grassroots, many health challenges can be tackled particularly the high rate of child and maternal death as well as child malnutrition and stunting rate,” the officer declared.