Nigeria News

Maiduguri, 28 September 2016 - In response to the detection of wild polio viruses (WPV) in Borno in August 2016 after more than two years of maintaining a polio-free status, the government of Nigeria declared the outbreak as a national public health emergency. Equally, the governments of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad and Niger declared a regional public health emergency for the Lake Chad sub-region.

Following the declaration in Nigeria, plans were made to involve the military and civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) in accessing children in very vulnerable areas.

September 2016 – Health Sector partners are urgently scaling-up the emergency health response to the humanitarian crisis in north east Nigeria where some 3.7 million people are in need of health assistance. A Health Sector Coordination team was deployed to Maiduguri to support the Ministry of Health in the coordination of the health sector response. 17 partners are actively engaged with government authorities to strengthen coordination of resources and emergency response.

3 October 2016 - Polio transition planning simulation exercise was conducted in Abuja on 27-28 September, 2016. The exercise reviewed output of polio asset mapping, especially personnel across ten polio programme main functional areas.

4 October 2016- The World Health Organization (WHO) is implementing a Human Resource for Health (HRH) project on ‘Enhancing the ability of frontline health workers to improve health in Nigeria’ with funding from Global Affairs Canada (GAC). The project supports the Federal Ministry of Health FMOH) to strengthen human resources for health at Federal, Bauchi and Cross River States.

6 October 2016, Borno, Nigeria – In response to the critical health needs of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Borno state, the World Health Organization (WHO) through the State Ministry of Health has delivered emergency medical supplies to Mafa and Dikwa IDP camps, two of the 15 areas liberated this year that host more than 75,000 internally displaced persons (IDP).

7 October 2016 - The World Health Organization is supporting the State Minsitry of Health in Borno State to deploy community resource persons (CORPs) trained on community integrated management of childhood Illness (cIMCI) and provision of integrated community case management of childhood illnesses (iCCM) to liberated areas of Borno.

WHO and partners are supporting the Borno State Government to respond to the humanitarian crisis in north-eastern Nigeria, where some 3.7 million people are in urgent need of essential health services. The actual numbers of people requiring life-saving help may be much higher as ongoing insecurity means many areas are still inaccessible.

Abuja, 07 October 2016 - Worried by the increasing malnutrition cases among children and adolescents girls in Kaduna state, the wife of Kaduna state Governor Hajiya Ummi El Rufai has sought for the assistance of World Health Organisation (WHO) to tackle the rising cases of malnutrition in the state.

October 2016 - The polio outbreak response in Nigeria and across the Lake Chad basin is being run within the context of a broader humanitarian emergency response, as north-east Nigeria is classified within WHO as a Grade 3 emergency. But what does this actually mean?

On 11 October 2016, WHO in collaboration with the State Ministry of Health delivered emergency medical supplies to an international NGO partner for distribution to facilities in Gwoza Local Government Area (LGA). The supplies are enough to treat 20,000 people for three months.