Pneumonia used to be a killer disease with high mortality rate in Jigawa state until a non governmental organisation came to the rescue. BAYO ALABIRA reports on efforts so far.
False belief
For a long while now, thousands of children in Jigawa state had been lost to the cold hand of death resulting from pneumonia. Amazingly, while this ugly trend persisted, parents of such victims attributed it to one of those diseases that usually kill children. Some parents even believed that the deaths of their children had something to do with cultural beliefs where newly- born babies have to face so many challenges before they grow up.Unknown to them, the incessant mass-death and burial reoccuring in urban centres, rural areas, hamlets as well as hard-to-reach villages was as a result of complications from pneumonia. Instead of tackling the monster directly through the use of modern medicine, those parents resolved to use local and traditional medicines of which instead of curing their loved ones, further complicated the condition leading to untimely death.
Effects of superstition
In fact, it was quite true that the cause of the death of these new born babies and young children who are mostly between five months and five years was unknown by parents in the state. Because of this, it was generally attributed to the work of witches for those who believe in superstion. There were however those who believe in normal life-threatening diseases in children while others believed that it was the will of God who gives and takes away.
When help came
However, when the unknown disease was taking the innocent babies unabated without any help from anywhere, a non governmental organisation ‘Save the Children International’ came to the rescue. This made it possible for parents to jettison their old-fashion way of treating the disease to embrace the modern way of tackling the menace by patronising modern health facilities.To this end, the organisation has arrested the situation as well as reduced the child mortality rate in the state generally to a minimum level because of the awareness passed round across the state. Even though only Kiyawa local government area was selected out of the 27 LGAs in the state, the impact and knowledge of pneumonia, the child-life consuming disease has positively been felt in the remaining local government areas. In line with this development, Save the Children International carried along working journalists as Inspiring Partners towards fighting the scourge.
Representatives of the media organisations were trained at various workshops organised for them with a view to carrying out the enlightenment to the general public. With the involvement of the media, the campaign against the dreaded disease has been successfully felt across the 27 LGAs in the state.Even recently, Save the Children International has taken the bull by the horn during a training organised for journalists from the state at R&K Guest Palace Hotel Kano. During the two day training programme, experts from the organisation including the chief of part, Dr Isa Adamu, the project manager, Comrade Abdullahi Magama and Mr George Oko the communication expert had groomed the media men on various reporting techniques about pneumonia in the state. Among the reporting techniques identified during the various sessions include, the avoidance of sensational areas that can make the situation inflamably bad.The experts also educated the journalists on what they called ‘Integrated Sustainable Pneumonia and Infectious Diseases Reduction in Nigeria” tagged (INSPIRING). According to them, the inspiring programme was chosen to partner with representatives of the media organisations in order to sustain the tempo of awareness, information, communication as well as dissemination of its programme to the larger society. During the sessions, papers were also presentend by some members of the working journalists from the state. Among them were Dauda Hadejia of Radio Jigawa, Sadiq Ilyasu Danbatta of Channel Television as well as Mohammed Zangina Kura of Leadership Newspaper. During the sessions, participants were urged to always identify areas of coverage or master the background knowledge of the subject matter very well before reporting issues of local, state or national interest. Pneumonia, being one of the most dangerous child-life threatening killer diseases is estimated to have killed about 200,000 children annually in Nigeria. While in Jigawa state, it is estimated to be 20,000 or thereabout as the number of children being killed every year across the state according to the Ministry of health. However, it was in view of this that Jigawa from the North-west zone of Nigeria has been selected as the most rural state in the country with devastating effect of pneumonia infection while on the other side, Lagos state was also selected by Save the Children International as the most urban centre in Nigeria to pilot the programme. And in each of the two states, one LGA was selected for the pilot programme where a thorough investigation into the cause and treatment of the disease is being carried out as well as the remedy to end the child-killer disease. Therefore, the mortality rate in children under-five years are unacceptably high in the north and Jigawa to be precise. Before now, there was no knowledge of the disease; therefore, analysts are of the views that lack of the knowledge was more dangerous than the disease itself. This is because before now when it affects children, instead of being taken to the hospital or nearest PHC to be treated properly, parents take their children to traditionallists to be treated with herbs made up of leaves and roots from trees, among others. To this end, pneumonia has been traced to be the leading cause of deaths with 880,000 deaths in 2016 globally. Half of these global deaths are said to be occurring in just five countries, including Nigeria. The under-five years mortality rate in Jigawa is said to be 192 per 1,000 live births and it is estimated that there are 14,988 cases of paediatric pneumonia in Jigawa annually. From November 2018 to June 2019, a situational analysis of paediatric pneumonia has been conducted in the state by a non-governmental organisation to inform the design of an intervention programme to reduce the paediatric mortality in these settings.
Poverty and Illiteracy
During the two-day training, factors responsible for the deadly disease were traced to poverty in high level among the population in the state. Most of the affected families could not take their children to modern health facilities because they could not afford to purchase the needed drugs due to lack of resources; no wonder, they rather they go about patronising traditional healers who treat their children with herbal medicine which further complicated the conditions of those children.Furthermore, illiteracy was also traced to be one of the factors that worsened the situation in the state. Investigation shows that illiterate parents always wondered what had been responsible for the untimely death of their children. This was however traced to lack of enough awareness, enlightenment as well as sensitisation among the parents of the victims.
State of primary healthcare facilities
The primary healthcare facilities in the state are enough to cater for rural dwellers if they are equipped with drugs, but the problem, according to investigation is that some of those PHC facilities are just but building structures without medicine and the health attendants. In Jigawa, PHC facilities were privided according to the number of electoral wards. This is supposed to indicate that each electoral ward across the 27 LGAs has a PHC where patients can visit them at any time of the day. Be it as it may, some of the PHC facilities are out of stock making it difficult for patients to benefit from them. And apart from lack of drugs, some PHC facilities located in rural areas, villages and hamlets or hard- to- reach areas are said be empty without health attendants or needed drugs.As it is, awareness and sensitization campaigns have to be carried out in all the villages across the 27 local government areas, across the 30 state constituencies, 11 federal constituencies as well the three senatorial zones of the state in order to further educate the masses.
