A total of 154 health workers in Gombe State drawn from the eleven Local Government Areas of the State have been selected and are currently undergoing training on the detection and treatment of hydroceles (swelling of the scrotum in males) and elephantiasis as well as other neglected tropical diseases.
The training was put together by Amen HealthCare and Empowerment Foundation, which brought together 14 Primary HealthCare workers from each of the eleven LGA’s of the State.
The health workers will also be provided with medication and skills to treat and manage these diseases which the World Health Organisation (WHO) describe as neglected tropical diseases.
President and Founder of Amen Foundation, Rita Aizehi Aimiuwu, while flagging off the training said that the treatment will be run free for people found with such conditions.
The training, while the training will run for three days, as the eleven Local Government Areas have been divided into three with each set being trained in a day.
She also said that the target for the search and treatment of hydroceles are for male children between ages one to 15 while elephantiasis covers women of all ages.
Rita Aizehi further explained that before now, most of these diseases were neglected but revealed that just within the last few weeks, Amen Foundation had done surgeries for not fewer than 1,100 persons.
“So far, hydroceles surgeries have done for over 1,100 patients and is still going on until in Deba. It’s a continuous programme because we are going to another LGA. We have not cleared Deba yet,” she stated.
According to her, the organization had started the management of elephantiasis and surgeries for hydroceles in October last year.
She further said that “We started surgeries in October, we also started the management of elephantiasis. We started in February by training four health workers for each LGA to search and manage, and so, the four health workers go round the LGA to find people with the conditions and we provide all that is required to manage the condition.”
According to her, “In the process of doing that, we found out that a lot of children had hydroceles, what is called congenital hydroceles and we were worried because I have never thought children could have that”.
She added that ” We discussed this with the State Government, partners and we felt we needed to investigate this further and then with the support of our main funder, End Fund, we were able to get support from Pact Foundation.”
While Declaring the training open, the Gombe State Commissioner of Health, Dr Habu Dahiru, described the occasion as a great milestone in the State because the tropical diseases had been neglected in the past.
He said that the Inuwa Yahaya administration in the State has upgraded the infrastructure and manpower of the health sector of the State and called on community leaders to cooperate with the trained workers in identifying people with such cases.
It is expected that by April next year, Amen Foundation would have gathered enough data covering the entire State on the cases of hydroceles and elephantiasis.
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154 health workers trained on detection, treatment of neglected tropical diseases in Gombe
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