The disturbing reports emerging from Kano State about the suspected deaths of more than 50 children from diphtheria should serve as another urgent warning to Nigeria. Diphtheria is a vaccine-preventable disease, but it keeps claiming lives. This is because too many children remain unprotected and too many cases are detected or treated too late.

The Kano State Centre for Disease Control has commenced an investigation into the reported deaths in Rano Local Government Area following concerns raised by the state House of Assembly. The investigation is necessary because the official figures presently available do not tally with the reported number of deaths.

According to the KNCDC Director-General, Professor Muhammad Abbas, Kano has officially recorded 32 diphtheria cases in 2026, including 25 in August, six in July and one in May. Yet reports indicate that more than 50 children may have died in Rano alone. The authorities are therefore conducting autopsies and investigating whether diphtheria was indeed responsible for the deaths.

Whatever the final outcome of the investigation, the development exposes a far bigger and more troubling reality. Kano has recorded more than 38,000 suspected diphtheria cases since the outbreak began in 2022, with more than 31,000 subsequently confirmed. More than 55 per cent of confirmed cases involved children who had never received a diphtheria vaccine, while another 16 per cent were only partially immunised.

These figures are a devastating indictment of Nigeria’s failure to protect children from a disease for which an effective vaccine has long existed.

The national picture is equally alarming. Nigeria has experienced a major resurgence of diphtheria since 2022. Thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths have been recorded, with the disease spreading across numerous states. The World Health Organisation says iNigeria accounts for the largest share of diphtheria cases reported in the African Region.

This should not be accepted as the inevitable price of poverty or population size. Diphtheria is preventable. When children are fully immunised, their risk of developing severe disease falls dramatically. The persistence of the disease therefore points not merely to a medical problem but to weaknesses in Nigeria’s public-health system.

The first and most important response must be to strengthen routine immunisation. Vaccination should not depend primarily on emergency campaigns launched after an outbreak has already begun. Every eligible child should receive the recommended doses through functioning primary healthcare centres, schools, outreach programmes and community-based services.

Nigeria must also improve its ability to identify children who have missed vaccinations. Immunisation records should be properly maintained, communities with low coverage should be mapped and health workers should actively reach children who have been left behind.

But vaccination alone will not solve the problem. Early detection and treatment are equally critical. Diphtheria can become life-threatening when treatment is delayed. Therefore, families ought to know the warning signs and understand that a child with a severe sore throat, fever, difficulty swallowing or breathing, neck swelling or a suspicious membrane in the throat requires immediate medical attention.

The revelation that some affected children may have been treated at home or by traditional healers is particularly concerning. Traditional and religious leaders, community health workers and local organisations should be incorporated into awareness campaigns so that suspected cases are referred promptly to appropriate health facilities.

The authorities must also address the persistent problem of *under-reporting. If families do not bring sick children to health facilities, official statistics will inevitably underestimate the true scale of an outbreak. The difference between the 32 officially recorded cases in Kano this year and reports of more than 50 deaths in one local government area demonstrates why disease surveillance cannot depend exclusively on patients presenting at hospitals.

Community surveillance must therefore be strengthened. Health officials should actively investigate clusters of unexplained childhood deaths, unusual sore throat illnesses and other symptoms consistent with diphtheria. Deaths occurring outside hospitals should not automatically disappear from the public-health system.

There is also an urgent need to ensure that health facilities have the capacity to manage suspected cases. Vaccines, diagnostic capacity, antibiotics, diphtheria antitoxin, isolation facilities and trained personnel must be available when and where they are needed. A vaccination programme cannot be described as effective if a child who develops the disease cannot obtain timely treatment.

Kano’s experience should also compel the Federal Government and other states to examine their own preparedness. An outbreak that appears concentrated in one state can quickly cross geographical boundaries. The movement of people between states, crowded living conditions and gaps in immunisation coverage create opportunities for transmission.

The Federal Government, state governments and local councils must therefore stop approaching diphtheria principally as an emergency that requires intervention only after deaths occur. This country needs a sustained national strategy combining routine immunisation, surveillance, public education, rapid diagnosis, effective treatment and transparent reporting.

Parents, too, have an important responsibility. Vaccination should not be viewed with suspicion or postponed unnecessarily. A child who misses recommended vaccines is left vulnerable not only to diphtheria but to other preventable diseases. Parents and caregivers must also seek professional medical attention quickly when children develop worrying symptoms rather than relying solely on home remedies or unqualified treatment.

The authorities must, however, recognise that public trust is earned through accessibility, transparency and consistent service delivery. Vaccine hesitancy cannot simply be blamed on parents while health facilities remain difficult to reach or immunisation services are irregular. Government must make vaccination convenient, free where provided under public programmes, reliable and available in the communities that need it most.

The Kano investigation must be completed swiftly and its findings made public. If diphtheria caused the reported deaths, the state should establish exactly how the outbreak escaped early detection and why so many children were vulnerable. If another disease or combination of factors was responsible, that must also be clearly established.

Most importantly, the deaths must not become another statistic that disappears after the immediate crisis.

Nigeria has already lost too many children to a disease that modern medicine knows how to prevent and treat. Diphtheria should be a reminder that public health is ultimately about prevention, not merely responding to funerals.

The country must immunise more children, detect cases earlier, treat patients faster and strengthen surveillance from the community level upwards. No Nigerian child should die because a preventable disease was allowed to become a public-health scourge.