Abuja — National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has ranked epidemic and disease occurence as the highest causes of death in the country.

The agency which is saddled with the responsibility for disaster control and management in the country, said indicators have also showed that the high rate of infection and fatality recorded from epidemics were mainly due to illiteracy, ignorance, poor state of personal and environmental hygiene as well as the absence of functional community-based early detection and monitoring systems.

Speaking at a planning workshop for the implementation of early warning multi-disciplinary report in Abuja, Director-General of the agency, AVM Muhammed Bida (rtd), said a study analysis of top 10 natural disasters in Nigeria carried out by NEMA showed that nine out of every 10 people killed from 1983to2008 died as a result of epidemic related deaths.

"It is a common knowledge that epidemics and diseases are leading cause of death in Nigeria. Compliled data base of top 10 disasters in Nigeria, by NEMA data base, sorted by the number of people killed for the period of 1983 to 2008, indicated that nine out of 10 were epidemic related deaths", he said.

Audu-Bida said in order to stem the tide and reverse the disturbing trend, NEMA and the Ministry of Health had joined hands to organise a stakeholders forum on early warning mechanism on epidemic incidence which led to the formation of committee to work out strategies to deal with the matter.

He said the report of the committee has been accepted by the stakeholders for implementation, adding that it involves an action plan highlighting epidemic prone diseases and months of occurrences.

According to him the committee's report also listed states prone to epidemics, preventive measures , dates of activivites and the agencies responsible for addressing the scourge.

As a means of achieving effective implementation of the work plan, the D-G said series of sensitisation campaigns are to be undertaken to create awareness on existing gaps and actions to be taken to address them.

The multi-disciplinary report on epidemic response strategy contained detailed analysis of gaps in our early warning system and the various ways and means of addressing them.