… Says state disease surveillance system on high alert

… Urges residents to maintain good hygiene

By Samuel Oyadongha, Yenagoa

Against the backdrop of rising cases of cholera outbreak across the country, the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Health, Professor Seiyefa Brisibe, yesterday assured that no life would be lost to the deadly disease in state as measures have been put in place to tackle the scourge should it occur.

Brisibe, a professor of family medicine stated this at a news conference in Yenagoa after his tour of health facilities in the state few days after he was sworn in by Governor Douye Diri.

He said though the state lies in the endemic belt of  tropical diseases which are ‘without borders,’ there was no cause for alarm as the state disease surveillance system has been heightened.

His words, “Some of us are aware of the recent issues of cholera outbreak where we have some issues of data discrepancies between Bayelsa and the NCDC. We believe that these are things that will be corrected as we have been promised but we are also mid-streaming public health because we know that Bayelsa State is in the endemic belt of tropical diseases such as cholera, yellow fever and others.

“Therefore, we need to be proactive, going forward in a way that we do not get to the point of having data discrepancies at all.

“And outside that, we have to be proactive and see that Bayelsans are in the forefront of knowing what to do to prevent the adverse effect of an outbreak if at all there is any.

“Luckily, up till yesterday at least we have not had any positive case of cholera because the classification or what defines someone as having cholera is that the stool will be subjected to a culture and it is when it is positive that we say we have an outbreak. But we don’t have that’

“It is happening in Lagos now, it may get to us because people travel to and from Lagos but we are prepared. We have built systems and there is active surveillance in place, capacity building and use of rapid detection test instruments.

“There is also inter agency collaboration, community sensitization and resources have been mobilized for us to train and retrain our workers and we have also built very strong feedback and coordination mechanisms especially through our primary health care facilities.’

‘So, we are hopeful that with what we have done we will be in a position that we are not going to lose any life to the outbreak. And for me, that is the most critical and most important thing because we are in the tropics, these are disease entities that we cannot holistically eliminate at this point in time. It is for us to build resilient health systems where even when we have this risk we don’t lose lives.”

He, however, stressed the need for residents to always maintain good hygiene to prevent contracting the disease.