The Anambra State Government has commemorated 2024 Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Day.
Addressing a press conference to mark the day in Awka on Thursday, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Afam Ben Obidike, represented by the Director of Public Health in the Ministry, Dr Anaeme Afam, said that the day is being celebrated annually on the 30th of January and revealed that this year’s event marks the fifth celebration of NTD in the state.
Dr Obidike noted that the day was another opportunity for relevant stakeholders to renew their focus on expanding advocacy and sensitization on the debilitating but preventable diseases of poverty and revealed that Nigeria suffers from Africa’s largest burden of neglected tropical diseases, as almost all the local government areas in Nigeria have one case of NTD or another.
The Commissioner made it clear that the 2024 theme of the celebration, “Unite to Act Towards Elimination of NTDs,” was a global call for all persons, communities, organisations, and nations to join hands in the fight against the disease to ensure possible elimination and eradication by the year 2030.
He further said that out of the four preventive chemotherapy NTDs under intervention, Anambra, in collaboration with the Carter Centre, has successfully interrupted the transmission of two, including river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, through mass drug administration and vector control programmes, and commended Governor Chukwuma Soludo for all his support for the ministry.
The Programme Officer, Anambra State for the Carter Centre, Mrs Attamah Egeonu, who said that NTDs are wreaking havoc in society, added that they have been doing an intervention on it since 1995 and called on all hands to be on deck to eradicate it.
The State Coordinator of Reproductive Health, Dr. Uju Okoye; the Head of Planning, Research, and Statistics in the Ministry of Health, Mrs Edith Nwachukwu; and the State Health Educator, Mrs. Uju Onwuegbusi, among others, attended the event.
The conference also featured presentations of prizes to the best community-directed distributors (CDDs) and a road walk.
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