The Chief Medical Director, Sokoto State Noma Children’s Hospital Dr. Shafiu Isah, has called for the urgent need to see the elimination of severe and lethal mouth disease as a priority in addressing the mortality rate in the country.
Dr. Isah made the call while carrying out treatments for children suffering from neglected diseases in hard-to-reach areas of Nigeria.
He said Noma is a gangrenous disease that could kill 90% of its victims, especially those living in hard-to-reach rural areas within a few weeks.
According to the chief medical director lack of awareness has contributed to the ill-treatment of this preventable and treatable disease, hence all hands must be on deck to avert the ugly trend as children are at the receiving end.
“Due to extreme poverty and lack of awareness, unfortunately, a lot of these children die at home without even making it to the hospital,”
Also speaking Dr. Abubakar Abdullahi Bello, Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee, Sokoto state Noma Children’s Hospital noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) 1998 global estimation reviewed 140,000 new cases yearly particularly with children between the ages of two and six in sub-Saharan Africa stressing that some of the ultimate survivors of this disease are left with severe facial disfigurements which result in complicating the victim’s eating, speaking, seeing or breathing that often leads to stigmatization and human rights violations if not treated immediately or approximately.
“We’ve had cases where when the patient presents to the hospital, the whole of the lower jaw is already gone, or the whole of their nostril pathway is gone,” says Dr. Abubakar Abdullahi Bello, Chairman of the Medical Advisory Committee at Sokoto Noma Children’s Hospital.
But if the cases present to the hospital early, then they don’t have such issues. That’s what we are advocating for. With early admission, we can also reduce the duration of the stay in the hospital and these patients will not require surgical intervention.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa Technical officer for oral health, Yuka Makino said over the years WHO has worked tirelessly in strengthening the existing surveillance on noma preventable disease through fundraising to scale up training of primary care workers, with 741 having received training on noma in 2021 and the first half of 2022 in Nigeria.
Thus enjoining the citizens to practice the basic public health interventions such as improving nutrition and oral hygiene; controlling comorbidities such as measles, malaria, and HIV infection; and improving access to routine vaccinations to prevent Noma.
“This course will be a useful self-learning tool for health workers to increase their capacity to prevent, identify, treat and refer noma considering both public health and human rights aspects. Officers in charge of noma at the national and district level can also utilize the course material to train primary care workers,” says Yuka Makino, a technical officer for oral health at the WHO Regional Office for Africa.”
