Rivers State, on March 24, joined the rest of humanity to mark the 2020 World Tuberculosis Day, with the major target to do everything possible, with its array of influential religious leaders and other stakeholders, to change her fifth high burden status among the 36 states and Abuja, with its current burden estimated at above 16,000 cases.
Speaking at an event to mark the day, the state Commissioner for Health, Prof Chike Princewill, noted that in 2019, about 3,728 persons were diagnosed and treated for TB in the state, adding that apart from the 12 approved rapid diagnostic machines for free TB diagnosis provided in Rivers State, key players should join hands with the government to provide additional 15 TB diagnostic machines for the state in order to reduce the health burden on Rivers people.
The WTBD, observed by member states of the United Nations each year, is designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis and efforts to eliminate the disease. Proposed by International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) as an official UN Observance in 1982, a century after its discovery, with the theme, “Defeat TB: Now and Forever”, WTBD was not officially recognised as an annual occurrence by WHO’s World Health Assembly and the UN until over a decade later.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) that most often affect the lungs. It’s curable and preventable, and is spread from person to person through the air. People who are infected with HIV are 19 times more likely to develop active TB. The risk of active TB is also greater in persons suffering from other conditions that impair the immune system. Common symptoms of TB are cough with sputum and blood at times, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats.
In his message to mark World TB Day, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, emphasized that, “COVID-19 is highlighting just how vulnerable people with lung diseases and weakened immune systems can be. Millions of people need to be able to take TB preventive treatment to stop the onset of disease, avert suffering and save lives”.
The Director of WHO’s Global TB Programme, Dr Tereza Kasaeva, also echoed the same sentiment, saying, “As people around the globe come together to commemorate World TB Day, WHO is calling on governments, affected communities, civil society organisations, health-care providers, donors, partners and the industry to unite forces and step up the TB response – notably for TB preventive treatment – to ensure no one is left behind. We stand in solidarity with those affected by COVID-19 and those at the frontlines of the fight to combat the infectious disease. We need to act with urgency to ensure that in line with our vision of Health for All, no one with TB, COVID-19 or any health condition will miss out on the prevention and care they need. The time for action is now.”
Despite that linkage between TB and COVID-19, among others, as some of the infectious diseases complications ravaging humanity, Rivers State has effectively prosecuted the fight against TB over the last two decades and half, and the result has been crystal clear. Although the state ranked 5th in 2019 in high burden in Nigeria, The Tide is glad that the treatment for TB has been exponentially high in the state, even as the major challenge still remains in identifying infected persons. We note that last year, over 3,728 people were diagnosed of TB and subsequently placed on treatment. We also reckon the good treatment outcome in Rivers State, where cure rate is high; and treatment success rate is almost 90%, even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) target for success rate is about 25%.
This year’s theme, “It’s Time”, is aimed at drawing attention to the urgent need to act, by ensuring equitable and people-centred TB response and increased access to prevention and treatment, reduce stigma and discrimination as well as build accountability. This is why we suggest innovative ways to increase access to TB treatment while emphasizing collaboration with private sector by engaging private health practitioners, patent medicine vendors and community pharmacists to scale up the fight. Health workers as key stakeholders are enjoined to be more painstaking in the discharge of their duties, by among other things, obtaining information about patients’ history of cough, and make effective use of modern diagnostic services.
With this year’s target aimed at mobilising religious leaders in the fight, we urge those with large congregants to be in the frontline and use their exalted positions to raise awareness at the various churches and mosques on the need to go for diagnosis, and subsequently be treated, which will ultimately lesson the infection burden on the state. We equally advise them to be part of the crusade against TB by encouraging their followers to visit health facilities for diagnosis and treatment, if need be, with a view to combating the scourge and reversing the spike in the state.
Even as Rivers State ranks 5th in high burden of TB among the 36 states and the FCT, Nigeria regrettably ranks first among TB burden nations in Africa, and sixth globally, with 300,000 cases missing in most communities. About 18 Nigerians die hourly from TB, while 49 develop active TB; seven of which are children. In 2012, approximately 1.4 million deaths were attributed to TB infection, and Nigeria ranked 10th of the 22 high burden TB countries, and recorded over 190,000 new cases and over 280,000 prevalent TB cases. In 2016, Nigeria ranked 4th out of the 22 high tuberculosis burden countries worldwide and had the highest burden of tuberculosis in Africa, with an estimated 407,000 cases.
As we mark World TB Day 2020, the disease remains the world’s top infectious killer. Each day, over 4,000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. We join WHO, its partners, civil society and governments, especially Rivers State, in asking for support of major stakeholders, including religious leaders in scaling up the TB response, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals targets of ending the TB epidemic by 2030.
As the world comes together to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to ensure that essential health services and operations are continued to protect the lives of people with TB and other infectious diseases or health conditions. Health services, including national and state programmes to combat TB, need to be actively engaged in ensuring an effective and rapid response to COVID-19 while ensuring that TB services are maintained. We urge continued efforts to tackle longstanding health problems, including TB during global outbreaks such as COVID-19. At the same time, we suggest that programmes already in place to combat TB and other major infectious diseases can be leveraged to make the response to COVID-19 more effective and rapid.
We, therefore, challenge religious leaders, community leaders, policy makers, and the media community to join other stakeholders to collectively win the war against infectious diseases, including TB, COVID-19, and their likes. It is a task that must be done for the benefit of humanity. We urge leaders across all levels to put the accent on the urgency to act on the commitments made to: scale up access to prevention and treatment; build accountability; ensure sufficient and sustainable financing including for research; promote an end to stigma and discrimination, and encourage equitable, rights-based and people-centred TB response. We charge all to join forces under the banner “Find. Treat. All. #EndTB” to ensure no one is left behind. Let us unite forces in raising our voices for the millions suffering and dying due to TB, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s time for action. It’s time to end TB.

On Monday, March 16, 2020, a team of leaders of the Niger Delta region was in Government House, Port Harcourt, on a special visit to the Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike. The mission of the high-powered delegation was to prevail on the Rivers State Chief Executive to be the arrowhead of the push for the development of the richly endowed but largely marginalized region.
Leader of the team, Elder T.K. Ogorimagba, disclosed that their visit was primarily to urge Gov Wike to consider being the number one advocate for the development of the South-South region.
Accordingly, the elder statesman described Wike as the ‘Advocate of the region’, and urged the Rivers State governor to host a conference of ethnic nationalities of the South-South region to strategise on achieving consensus on promoting the development of the area.
This was after a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Hon Smart Adoki, had intimated the governor that the Niger Delta leaders were in Government House to thank him (Wike) for providing leadership for the region and to appeal to him to work for the restoration of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) in the interest and benefit of the people of the region.
In his response, Governor Wike decried the manifest disunity and disharmony among the ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta and called for unity and a commitment to building a strong bond of togetherness that will foster the needed development of the region.
The governor emphasised that discordant voices from the same region along ethnic and political affiliations will not only continue to tear the region apart but will also continue to empower the forces of social, political and economic marginalization, oppression and suppression against the people of the Niger Delta.
“We must speak with one voice, irrespective of the political party that we belong to. The time has come for us to work together. If we don’t work together, we will continue to lose out,’’ he said, adding that ‘’ the song we should sing is the Niger Delta, not that of any specific ethnic group.
‘’When we sing the song of any specific ethnic group, it is difficult to unite. Let’s not restrict our struggle to that of any particular ethnic nationality.’’
Governor Wike noted that ‘’It is unfortunate that the NDDC cannot deliver on regional projects. There are no interstate roads and NDDC has not done any major project. Instead, the NDDC is engaged in micro projects to promote political interests.’’
The Tide cannot agree any less with the Rivers State Chief Executive that the Niger Delta region needs unity of purpose and a strong synergy among its diverse ethnic nationalities in order to attract a better deal and an enhanced living condition for the people.
It is, indeed, not difficult to see, as the governor noted, that interventionist agencies like the Niger Delta Basin Development Authority (NDBDA), the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), among others, have not been able to effectively deliver on their mandate of changing the squalid physical, social and economic conditions of the region largely due to lack of coordination, synergy and singularity of medium of articulating the position of the region on the national stage.
We equally agree with the governor that the time has come for the region to harness the strength and benefits inherent in unity and togetherness. The politicisation of the agencies of government, including the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, intended to midwife development, with the active unholy connivance of ethnic, political and other vested interests in the region, must stop forthwith.
In this regard, it is heartwarming to note that the governors of the region recently resumed their meeting in Asaba, the Delta State capital, and came out with a renewed commitment to collectively tackle common problems and challenges facing the region.
With the governors showing the direction and leading the way, other critical stakeholders should not have difficulty taking a cue and following the guide.
We, therefore, think that traditional rulers should follow suit while ethnic groupings should endeavour to promote and propagate regional agenda above their individual group interests.
Ethnic-based youth councils and movements should also be prevailed upon to emphasise and pursue overall regional agenda as against championing primordial causes to the detriment of collective regional goals.
From every section and every quarter, there needs to be a convergence and unanimity in agitation for emphasis on competence and passion for the development of the area as the only guide in the appointment of helmsmen for NDDC, PAP and similar agencies.
The era of ethnic nationalities, political parties and other interest groups agitating for their own to be given such positions in view of giving them undue advantages without fair and due consideration for the greater wellbeing and benefit of the whole region should be gone for good.
A house divided against itself, they say, cannot stand. And indeed, a region with common shared ecological, environmental, social, economic and cultural problems as we have in the Niger Delta cannot overcome its peculiar challenges except with a concerted, unified, coherent and focused resolve.

Since Coronavirus (COVID-19) first reared its ugly head in December, 2019, in far away Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in China, a lot has changed. It has apparently turned the world upside down. Peace and tranquility which the people have hitherto enjoyed without inhibition seem to have deserted the globe. Panic and fear have crept in and becoming the order of the day in virtually all continents of the world.
Moreover, things appear to have really fallen apart and the centre seems not to hold any longer. The respiratory disease which the World Health Organisation (WHO), aptly described as a global pandemic, has continued to ravage and make mince meat of mankind, leaving in its wake pain, anguish and thousands of deaths. What is happening in the world today is only comparable to a war time.
Worse still, there is no sign of it abating in sight, as no vaccine for its cure has been discovered, even though scientists and medical experts are working round the clock to provide a panacea. At the last count, over 30,000 persons have died from the virus across the globe.
In fact, the rapidity with which the pandemic is spreading across the globe is unprecedented, most astonishing and alarming. In the history of the world, there is nothing compared to it. In response, and as a way of checking the widespread of the virus, various measures have been put in place.
There are massive lockdowns all over the world. Today, sporting events and activities are suspended or outrightly cancelled; and airports are closed. Businesses, contracts and appointments are put off; with heavy tolls on mankind. Stocks have continued to have free falls. Global oil prices have crashed. There are travel bans and restrictions here and there.
Today, the world is literally at a standstill; it is virtually convulsing, courtesy of the Coronavirus pandemic. Overnight, the fear of COVID-19 has become the beginning of wisdom in almost all countries of the world. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently asserted, “monitoring, containing and mitigating the effects of the disease should be top priorities for countries”.
Interestingly, several countries have swung into action to contain the spread of the ravaging monster. In Nigeria, for example, which has confirmed 131 cases so far, with two deaths, the Federal Government has taken drastic measures to curtail the spread of the disease.
It had earlier announced the closure of Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa; Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano; and the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu; and later placed total ban on international travels at all the airports in the country. It equally imposed travel ban on 13 countries which it considered to have high risk of the pandemic as well as banned public and civil servants from foreign travels, among other measures.
On Sunday, President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the nation on the situation and revealed the measures and some palliatives the government has put in place to cushion the effects of the disease on the citizenry.
We boldly state that some of the palliatives are not what Nigerians are expecting from the government today. The Federal Government should borrow a leaf from other countries which are providing other forms of palliatives to their citizens.
Most significantly, as soon as the news of the outbreak of the pandemic broke, the Rivers State Government swung into action by constituting a five-man Inter-Ministerial Committee on Enlightenment and Awareness Creation on COVID-19, to undertake aggressive sensitisation campaigns to check the menace of the contagion in the state. The committee, headed by the State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Pastor Paulinus Nsirim, has not relented in intensifying the campaigns by reaching out to critical stakeholders in the state.
Sensitisation jingles and messages aired on radio, television and newspapers, which the state government through the committee has powered, are no doubt going a long way to put the disease under control in the state.
These are beyond the efforts being personally made by the state Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, to contain the spread of the disease in the state. First, the Governor directed all schools and tertiary institutions in the state to shutdown till further notice. Regrettably, Rivers State has recorded one index case as confirmed by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
In furtherance of the commitment of the state government to protect Rivers residents, Governor Wike also announced the closure of all borders including air, sea and land routes into the state to traffic and banned vehicular movements in and out of the state. He equally closed down all public parks, night clubs and cinemas till further notice and banned public burials and wedding ceremonies across the state. He has signed the Executive Orders to give verve to all the directives issued by the state government to check the spread of the disease.
The government had earlier set up a 12-man task force on enforcement of the ban on public gatherings and places of worship headed by the Governor as a way of containing the spread of the disease.
Indeed, The Tide commends the actions taken by the state government so far to ensure that the incidence of COVID-19 in the state is reduced to the barest minimum. We believe that this is not the time to let down the guard. The sensitisation campaigns must be intensified.
The closure of the state’s borders by the Governor was the real icing on the cake in terms of the proactive measures adopted by government to contain the spread of the disease in the state. In fact, the government needs the support and cooperation of the Federal Government as well as all and sundry, to ensure that this particular measure works effectively.
We are also elated that the government is strengthening and enhancing the surveillance measures already in place to prevent the importation of the virus into the state. The truth remains that the battle against the pandemic is a battle that must be fought and won. For this to be realised, we think, all hands must be on deck.
All residents of the State must, therefore, observe basic principles of hygiene as recommended by experts by washing their hands regularly with soap and using alcohol-based sanitisers as well as keeping their immediate surroundings clean at all times. This is because, as they say, cleanliness is next to Godliness.
Again, the social distancing policy of the government must be strictly obeyed and enforced among other directives issued by the state government to actually contain the spread of COVID – 19.