The Federal Government has stated that it will find ways to tackle and stem the outbreak of cholera and other diseases in the country, News About Nigeria reports.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate stated this in an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday.
He noted that certain issues like housing, transport, and economic challenges must be addressed to tame the outbreak of cholera in the country.
According to the minister, a multi-sectorial approach can also be deployed to forestall the outbreak of infectious diseases like Cholera, Typhoid Fever, and Tuberculosis.
Pate maintained that the government needs to grow the country’s economy, and also translate that growth into incomes for households.
“There are many diseases that are socially determined; they are diseases of largely the population that are vulnerable and poor who live in inadequate housing, with low sanitation, who don’t have enough food, who are malnourished or whose occupation exposes them to certain disease conditions.
“So, to address population health, there is the biomedical which are certain diseases that we handle but there are some that go beyond that, and are multi-sectorial in terms of the determinant of why those diseases occur and how to respond to them.
“At the end of the day, we need to grow our economy, we need to translate that growth into incomes for households, we need to also build infrastructure; the base for the urbanisation that we are seeing so that people will have good housing, good nutrition, safe spaces, proper mental health, in addition to access to health facilities they can afford to get proper mental services.
“So, health is one thing that is not just a biomedical issue; there is health in almost all public policies, whether it is on housing, transportation, agriculture, environment, youths, even the gender dimension of it to ensure the women are not left behind, and there are vulnerabilities that will have to be addressed through social protection mechanism to ensure that there are safety nets for those who are left behind,” he stated.
He, however, noted that it requires the efforts of both the government and society if the health and well-being of the population will be improved.
