Adamawa’s ‘strange’ disease: The untold story

Many relatively young people have died here in the past two weeks. Confirming the increase in the death toll, the state commissioner of information, Alh.Musa Bubakari Kamale has said that the outbreak of the disease has so far claimed 77 lives across the northern part of the state while 934 persons were recorded to have […]

Many relatively young people have died here in the past two weeks. Confirming the increase in the death toll, the state commissioner of information, Alh.Musa Bubakari Kamale has said that the outbreak of the disease has so far claimed 77 lives across the northern part of the state while 934 persons were recorded to have been inflicted by the disease, meaning there was additional 200 cases from the earlier reported 746.

The culprit that has devastated not just the health but the very soul of this impoverished place is something that government officials here in Yola the state capital have generally insisted is not a problem, insisting that it is a ‘strange disease.’ While hints of the confounding epidemic first seeped out from remote areas of Fufore local government last month, the depth of the tragedy and the staggering toll it has taken on places like Mubi, Maiha and other areas are only now emerging, as desperate, dying farmers have started to speak out.

In Mubi North for instance, government officials estimate that more than 22 adults are dead and more than 60 percent are already suffering debilitating symptoms. That would give this local government area, and the others like it, localized rates that are the highest in the state.

Families of affected persons were faced with the problem of transporting victims to the next local government, which most of the times clocks to about 60 kilometers away. By all indications, the health workers strike in across the state has paralyzed public hospitals, forcing patients to forgo medical treatment. Most of the state’s 7,000 health workers, including nurses, specialists and administrators but not general doctors, in local government areas, began an indefinite strike on 25 June to protest the suspension of an improved salary structure by the state government, according to a health workers’ union leader in the state, Babangida Philibus.

Philibus told Weekly Trust that: “The government should take responsibility for all the people who are suffering from sicknesses as a result of the ongoing strike because the government caused it. Deaths in the recent cholera outbreak could have been avoided were health workers not on strike.”

Blame it on ghosts

The state government says it is suspending the structure while it eliminates a problem of ghost workers in the health sector. “The suspension of the new salary structure became imperative following mounting salary bills and allegations of a high number of ghost workers in the sector, in the face of dwindling government revenues due to the economic crunch,” Saidu Bobbo, a permanent secretary in Adamawa Stae’s health ministry, told newsmen. He said once the problem is resolved the new salary structure will resume, thereby solving many problems.

Speaking on the ravaging disease,the deputy chairman of Maiha, Yahya Hamman-Julde, who led journalists on assessment of the epidemic-stricken communities of Maiha, said the people were in dire need of medical intervention from the state and federal governments in order to battle the upsurge of the menace.

Hama- Julde attributed the outbreak to poor social services like good water and lack of proper personal hygiene by people in the area. He recalled that though such menace had earlier hit the community, the latest incident would claim more lives if not quickly checked.

Not-so-rapid-response

While the strike continued to hinder the government’s emergency response to the victims, people relied on the state’s disease control team from the ministry of health and other volunteers as some victims’ resorted to local therapy.

While the team is doing a lot and the impact is clear, it was observed that there is the need for the provision of clean water and digging sanitary latrines, and support overworked and under resourced clinics with drugs and expertise, similarly, volunteers should be engaged in the remotest villages aimed at explaining to people the simple steps they must take to identify and avoid the illness.

Hitting shadows

Weekly Trust investigations revealed that, despite the desperate needs and despite the very real impact that the disease control teams are having across the state, cholera control is seriously under-funded. “The resources needed for battling cholera on the frontlines must be provided. The death toll already exceeds seventy-seven while hundreds were admitted. That would be one milestone too many, grim and entirely unnecessary,” said one of the health workers sent on rescue mission in Madagali. “The threat is definitely not over. Everyone expects cholera, because the root causes of the outbreak have not been addressed adequately yet,””said another health official.

Confirming the death toll, Adamawa’s Commissioner of Information, Musa Bubakari Kamale, said the worst-hit local government area is Mubi North. He also said from the report so far received from University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, where blood and other body fluid samples of ten affected persons was sent for lab analysis, nine were confirmed to be, positively, cholera cases.

Kamale said the strange disease could not be called cholera but involves severe vomiting, diarrhea and even cough, adding that already samples have since been sent to College Teaching Hospital Ibadan, University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, a research centre in France as well as United States of America, for analysis.

The most affected local government areas include: Mubi North, Mubi South, Michika, Madagali, Fufore, Hong as well as Maiha. Efforts to combat the disease for now have not been reaching rural areas, where many infected people go home to die, from cholera, and not from a ‘strange’ disease.