Govt set up committee to eliminate river blindness – Commissioner

chika ebuzor

October 22, 2016 6:58 PM

The Federal Government had launched a multi-year national plan to control and eliminate river blindness in Nigeria by 2020.

Kwara State Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed

The kwara Commissioner for Health,

Alege, who made this known in Ilorin on Saturday when he received the Sight Savers of Nigeria, said the the committee would assist eliminating river blindness and other diseases in the state.

He said the Federal Government had launched a robust and integrated multi-year national plan to control and eliminate the river blindness in Nigeria by 2020.

The commissioner said that the government had inaugurated a committee to work with the affected local governments in the state to reduce the scourge in the communities.

The commissioner explained that NTDs were poverty-related and degenerating diseases.

He included astrachoma, leprosy, buruli ulcer, elephantiasis, soil transmitted helminthes, schistosomiasis and river blindness, among others as degenerating diseases.

“We experience the bigger burden of the disease in Nigeria, hence we must put all measures on ground to solve the issue because NTDs are becoming a growing concern which must be tackled holistically,” he said.

Alege noted the state government would not leave any stone unturned in making health-care delivery available and affordable in every nook and cranny of the state.

Earlier in his address, the Sight Savers Country Director for Nigeria and Ghana, Dr Isiyaku Sunday, said the visit was aimed at advocating for government's to eliminate river blindness in the state.

He said Sight savers was the leading NGO supporting onchocerciasis in Africa, adding that they are working in some African countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, among others.

Sunday said Nigeria bears 25 per cent of the NTDs burden in the African sub region with some of the NTDS being in the highest number of reported cases globally.

According to him, this makes them to impact negatively on life expectancy, education and economic opportunities of affected individuals and the communities they live in.

He added that the disease could be treated and prevented but were known to affect the poorest, most marginalised and most remote communities in the world.

He explained that they thrive where access to potable water, sanitation and hygiene, health-care and good housing conditions were limited or even lacking.

chika ebuzor