Since December 2022, 798 cases of diphtheria have been verified in Nigeria by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), with one death.
The NCDC recently revealed that 654 of the confirmed cases involved people who had not received vaccinations.
Multiple states have reported the outbreak, with Kano reporting the most cases at 782. The majority of cases involve children between the ages of 2 and 14; the case fatality rate is 10%.
Less than half of children under 15 are totally protected from the disease, according to the NCDC, which emphasizes the significance of vaccination in avoiding diphtheria and the need to increase historical vaccination coverage.