•Low-income nations for Gavi help on measles as NIMR unveils local monkeypox test kits
National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has debunked claim that a vaccine containing 40 per cent of mercury is being administered on Nigerian children by a foreign organisation.
The Director General, Prof. Christianah Mojisola Adeyeye, yesterday, in a press statement, said: “It has come to our knowledge that a statement was made that children in Nigeria were being administered a vaccine that contains 40 per cent mercury, which was prescribed by foreign organisation. This statement is not true.”
BESIDES, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) is working with governments, communities and partners to roll out measles therapies for vulnerable children across Nigeria and other Lower Income Countries (LICs).
In a press statement, yesterday, Gavi said from 2022 through the first half of 2023, it plans to support 22 LICs in undertaking measles campaigns to reach more than 85 million kids.
Managing Director of Country Programmes at Gavi, Thabani Maphosa, observed: “Measles vaccination not only prevents outbreaks and deaths, but it also serves as an entry point for routine immunisation. Given the high rates of coverage needed, these campaigns can help identify un-immunised and under-immunised children, bringing them more consistently into the health system.
“This is critical for the sustainability of the measles response, reducing outbreaks in the long-term and can also help save lives from other vaccine preventable diseases.
“Thanks to the widespread introduction of measles vaccine, (as) global measles deaths have fallen dramatically. In 2000, more than a million children died from measles, by 2020, this number was at a little over 60,000 deaths. Even with that impressive decline, however, progress has stalled in recent years. The pandemic (COVID-19) further impacted this: recent data from the 57 LICs by Gavi show that coverage of a first dose of measles vaccine (MCV1) fell by a total four per cent during the pandemic (COVID-19). The pandemic (COVID-19) also impacted countries’ abilities to undertake surveillance and report cases, making more outbreaks inevitable.
“But now, LICs, with support from Gavi and partners, are pushing back. Between January and October 2022, follow-up campaigns were launched in Burundi, Guinea, Madagascar, Syria (Damascus) and recently, Gambia. In Zimbabwe, a planned campaign was fast-tracked in response to an outbreak in September. In total, urgent efforts across multiple countries will aim to reach millions of children through the first half of 2023.
“Alongside introductions, catch-up and follow-up campaigns, Gavi is supporting governments with dedicated outbreak response activities, helping nine countries to combat outbreaks so far this year.”
ALSO, testing capacity for monkeypox has remained limited, partly attributable to unavailability of diagnostic kits.
To boost diagnosis, accessibility and affordability of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) facilities in the country, researchers at the Nigerian Institute to Medical Research (NIMR), Yaba, Lagos, have unveiled a new monkeypox viral Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) detection kit to bridge the gap.
DNA is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) is a complex compound of high molecular weight that functions in cellular protein synthesis and replaces DNA as a carrier of genetic codes in some viruses.
Minister of State for Health, Joseph Ekumankama, during his working visit to commission Clinical Trial Centre and Emerging Virus Disease Laboratory, said: “The clinical trial coordinating centre is to be used to carry out assessment of not only drugs and vaccines from elsewhere, but also our home-grown products. Clinical trials are the primary ways that researchers find out if a new treatment, like a new drug or diet or medical device is safe and effective in people and often used to learn if a new treatment is more effective and/or has less harmful side effects than the standard treatment, while the Emerging Virus Disease Laboratory was built to prepare Nigeria for future disease outbreak stemming out of our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic waves that are for diseases of the future that may occur newly or reemerge but are expanding in incidence and geographic areas, they may also be diseases that are currently unknown.”
A Molecular Biologist at NIMR, Dr. Joseph Shaibu, shared his views as a member of the team that developed the monkeypox kit. He said the stuff was developed with optimisation and validation processes locally.
He added that the idea was to minimise duration it takes for kits to be available and affordable.
Source: Guardian.ng
