Enugu State Govt Increases Monkeypox Health Surveillance
The Enugu State Government has increased its surveillance against the spread of the monkeypox virus within the state’s 14 local government areas.
On Wednesday, Dr. George Ugwu, the Executive Secretary of Primary Health Care Development Agency (ENS-PHCDA), revealed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu.
According to him, the disease surveillance officers in council areas have been sensitised and placed on alert to detect monkeypox.
‘‘Enugu is bordered by three states in the South-East region and two states in the North Central region. We have retrained our local disease surveillance officers on symptoms and signs to watch out for emerging and re-emerging diseases. Monkeypox has not been detected in Enugu State; but we are not resting on our onus since we are a multi-bordered state. We have stepped up all perimeter of local disease surveillance against monkeypox, other emerging and re-emerging diseases in order to safe-guard the health of all in the state.”
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“However, we want our residents as well as individuals and families living in the state to up their personal and environmental hygiene and cleanliness levels. The issues of taking good care of one’s hygiene and observing those protocols of personnel and family hygiene as during the heat of COVID-19 especially that of regular hand washing and sanitising. Our people should also be careful on how they handle or touch home pets and animals since the disease is first transmitted from animal to human as well as infected human to another normal human”.
Dr. Ugwu also mentioned that the agency, its affiliates and partners have also sharpened their response time for any suspected case of emerging and re-emerging diseases.
Recently, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) stated that Nigeria had recorded 21 confirmed cases of the Monkeypox disease within the last five months with only one death.
The NCDC also disclosed that in May, only six new confirmed positive cases had reported in four states with Bayelsa (two), Adamawa (two), Lagos (one) and Rivers (one).
SOURCE: NAN
