29 million Nigerians no longer need onchocerciasis intervention — FG

Shina Abubakar, Osogbo

The Chairman, National Onchocerciasis Elimination Committee, NOEC, Professor Bertram Nwoke has disclosed that 29 million Nigerians no longer need government intervention on the disease.

He added that the Federal Government’s efforts to eliminate the disease have yielded positive result in more than ten states of the federation, as the committee has successfully interrupted the spread of parasite-causing onchocerciasis in black flies in the states.

The former acting Vice Chancellor of Imo State University, while speaking at the two weeks capacity training for entomologist at the Osun State University main campus in Osogbo, said the training for young scientists across the country was aimed at building on the gains achieved so far with a view to completely eliminating the disease.

His words; “We have come for the training of young scientists in the study and management of black flies that transmit river blindness and we need them to be trained appropriately so that they will now be used in fighting against the black fly and also help us to control river blindness because these black flies breed in fast flowing waters. From there,the young ones will come out and develop to adults and then fly around and bite our farmers and transmit this river blindness.

“This disease causes the highest blindness in Nigeria after glacoma, so if we are able to stop it from transmitting the parasite that causes river blindness, we’ve achieved interrupting it. That is why we’re training these people, to know the biology, how they transmit and how we can control them or eliminate them so that they can no longer transmit it.

“In Nigeria we have already interrupted transmission in the following states; Plateau, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Kebbi, Kaduna, Delta, Imo, Abia, Enugu and Anambra and more than 39 million Nigerians are no longer taking the drug because the disease has been eliminated or interrupted.

“But in other areas where the disease is still very endermic, we need to train these younger ones to help us evaluate them. We now run through the flies, get them and analyze them and find out whether they’re still carrying the parasite or not. If they are not carrying the parasite, they are no longer transmitting the disease. It means you have interrupted but they need to know how to do it. That is why we brought them here to study it.

“We have participants from all the zone of the country, so that each zone is going to have a pool of young scientists that know how to manage these black flies and we can use them to evaluate whether we are succeeding in the interruption of the disease or not”.

Also, the Chairman of Neglected Transmittable Diseases, NTDs, Federal Ministry of Health, Fatayi Adeniran said the Federal Government is happy with the achievement of the committee on elimination of the disease.

He added that the federal government would rally round Osun State University in its endeavour to develop manpower to achieve elimination of the disease in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

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