The mission of the WHO Nigeria Country Office is to promote the attainment of the highest sustainable level of health by all people living in Nigeria through collaboration with the government and other partners in health development and the provision of technical and logistic support to country programmes.
Nigeria became a member of the World Health Organization in 1960 and signed the Basic Agreement in 1962. Over the last four decades therefore, WHO has worked in close collaboration with the Nigerian government, mainly with the Federal Ministry of Health, to establish a wide array of collaborative programmes.
The main WHO Country Office is located in the United Nations House, Abuja the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In addition, a network of offices has been established in each of the 36 states of the country and the FCT, to provide appropriate and accessible technical support to States and Local Government Areas (LGAs). This has improved collaboration with stakeholders and partners as well as the visibility of WHO at those levels.
In this issue:
Nigeria Finally Starts Population Based Tuberculosis Prevalence Survey with WHO Support

The National TB control programme under the Federal Ministry of Health has finally started a nationwide population based national TB prevalence survey. Advocacy, enumeration and data collection has started in three states in the southern part of the country. Take off is built on the experiences of the pilot survey which was conducted in March/April 2011.
Though TB control and prevention efforts in Nigeria has progressed relatively well over the almost two decades of the introduction of the DOTS Strategy, it still constitutes a public health challenge.
According to the WHO Report of 2011, Nigeria now ranks 10th among the High Burden countries for TB in the world. The emergence of drug resistant TB and relatively high burden of HIV/AIDS have impacted negatively on TB control and prevention efforts.
WHO Nigeria supports introduction of Xpert MTB/RIF technology for Diagnosis of MDR TB in Nigeria

In December, 2010, WHO announced the official endorsement of the new Xpert molecular technology.
Xpert MTB/RIF has been described by many as a revolutionary breakthrough in the fight against TB. Xpert MTB/RIF detects M. tuberculosis as well as Rifampicin-conferring resistant mutations and provides results within 100 minutes. It is an automated cartridge-based Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT) for TB based on the GeneXpert multi-disease platform.
Country Cooperation Strategy
Count Down... to Polio eradication in Nigeria - February 2011 (1.21 MB)
Nigeria Country Cooperation Strategy 2008-2013 (783.21 kB)
Country Cooperation Strategy at a glance: Nigeria (261.77 kB)
Statistics
Health Profile of Nigeria - 2006 (394.28 kB)
The Acting WHO Representative to Nigeria is Dr Okello
