The Carter Centre says it has treated 36.1 million people with Albendazole and Mectizan in Plateau and Nasarawa, northcentral Nigeria.

It was gathered that the non-governmental organisation (NGO) carried out over 10,000 surgeries of Lymphatic Filariasis (LF), a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD).

LF is a neglected tropical disease that mostly affects people in rural areas. It is caused by microscopic, thread-like worms and spread by infected mosquitoes.

In 2017, Nigeria accounted for 14.3 percent of the global population of people who required LF treatment and an estimated total of 128,342,085 people required preventive chemotherapy, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

In 2018, only 79,831,396 people were estimated to have been reached with treatment for LF at least once.

‘As part of our success story, we interrupted the transmission of guinea worm in 2008 and successfully eradicated it, leading to the certification of Nigeria as guinea worm-free in 2013’, The Guardian quoted the NGO’s Director of Integrated Health Programmes, Dr Abel Eigege, as saying.

Eigege was speaking against the backdrop of the 2022 World NTD Day.

Marked every 30 January, the World NTD Day aims to translate awareness into action, secure increased resources, and facilitate political leadership and ownership of NTD programmes in affected countries.

‘We started the Oncho programme in 1992. By 2017, we interrupted the transmission and eliminated the transmission in 2021.

‘It is a milestone in the sense that Plateau and Nasarawa are the only states that have eliminated Onchocerciasis (river blindness). They are also the only states that have eliminated LF’.

The Plateau State NTD Coordinator, Philemon Dagwa, commended Carter Centre for its life-saving interventions.

‘Carter Centre has been working on the Plateau for more than two decades and so many diseases have been eradicated’, Dagwa said.

‘Government had been driving the system by making available their staff to support Carter Centre’.

Photo source: WHO