The World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, and IRC have renovated, equipped and handed over an Isolation centre located at Specialist Hospital Potiskum to the Yobe state government in its quest to curb and manage Diphtheria cases, among other diseases.
Handing over the facility, the WHO Northeast Emergency Manager, Dr Beatrice Muraguri, and the state coordinator of the WHO, Dr Ningi Barau Nuhu, revealed after assessing the facility, that renovating it would reduce the challenge of overcrowding in the main isolation centre.
“WHO, UNICEF and other partners are working with the Yobe state government to ensure we have a society that is healthy and deprived of disease. Any time there is an outbreak, we come together in a coordinated manner towards abetting the disease outbreak.
“So in an effort to ensure this is achieved, there are a lot of activities that are being carried out with funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Germany, including sensitisation of the general public on prevention and early reporting of cases, case management to those who are affected and ensuring they are brought the facilities and treated.
“In view of this, we came to assess this facility that has the capacity to manage the disease and discovered this kind of support is required, we renovated the edifice to curtail the outbreak,” they said.
Receiving the renovated facility on behalf of the state government, the Executive Secretary of the State Primary Healthcare Management Board, Dr Babagana Kundi Machina, thanked WHO and other partners for the foresight.
“You know we have the outbreak of Diphtheria in the state and we needed all sorts of support we could get to improve our response effort and case management. One of the challenges we faced was paucity of space to accommodate patients, WHO came in, looked at the existing structure on ground for possible support.
“They came in, renovated and equipped the edifice, as you can see the good job they did, we are really grateful to them, it will accommodate more patients because our existing isolation centre is over stretched,” he said.
The Yobe state government recently confirmed that 26 patients had died following the outbreak of the dithetheria disease in the state with Potiskum recording the highest cases.
