Health minister cautions on meningitis

Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole had urged Nigerians to be alert and take preventive measures against meningitis as this is the season of the deadly disease.

Prof Adewole speaking with the members of Network of Reproductive Health Journalists of Nigeria in Ibadan said that the Federal Government cannot afford to vaccinate every single citizen against the disease at the moment.

According to him, meningitis is a seasonal disorder that is easy to diagnose but the protective vaccine is very expensive.

The minister said: “That is why we are saying Nigerians should be on the lookout for it. It is so easy to treat. The vaccine is expensive.  When a case is detected, we have an epidemic threshold then we quickly vaccinate people in the local governments, that is the best we can do for now.  When we are more prosperous then we can vaccinate everybody.

“The conjugate is about $20 a vial, while the polyvalent is $3 a vial, so you can calculate what we need for the Nigeria population, and that is for just the vaccine, not including the syringes and other consumables; so, our best bet is to alert Nigerians that this is the season for meningitis and they should beware. We need to contain it.”

He went on: “Meningitis is seasonal and this is the season and we are alerting Nigerians. The terrible outbreak we had in 2017 was because it was on for three months before we got to know.

“All of us know what meningitis is, it requires a lumbar puncture; look at the fluid cerebrospinal fluid. When you check and it is milky, then you know there is infection and you can culture it and begin treatment.

“It is so easy to treat because the causative organism is responsive to antibiotics, but when we do not know that it is meningitis, we could treat malaria for three to five days, typhoid for one week then by the time we get to know, it would have spread.

“And it spreads like wildfire. As we attend to patients, 10 people can surround the infected person and that one patient would infect six or seven persons and it spreads like that. So, this is the season to alert people to look out and promptly report any suspicion to nearest health facility.

“The government does not have enough money to vaccinate the whole country.”