Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, has ended its three-year emergency response to the diphtheria outbreak in Kano State after supporting the vaccination of more than 835,000 children and treating over 14,700 patients during one of Nigeria’s worst outbreaks of the disease.
The humanitarian medical organisation announced on Monday that the intervention, carried out in partnership with the Kano State Ministry of Health, concluded with a large-scale vaccination campaign aimed at protecting children from the highly infectious disease.
This is contained in a statement by Abdoul-Aziz Djibrilla, the MSF Project Coordinator for Kano, and made available to newsmen on Monday.
According to the statement, since launching the emergency response in early 2023, MSF had treated 14,707 children through its treatment centres and supported facilities, providing both hospital-based and home-based care while strengthening referral systems, disease surveillance, data management and community engagement.
The organisation said two rounds of vaccination were conducted in 2026, with 348,080 children vaccinated during the first phase, which ended on April 27, and another 486,948 children immunised across 20 wards between June 20 and 24. Together, the campaigns delivered more than 835,000 doses of diphtheria vaccine.
