Thread by @Chikwe_I

Over the last two weeks, we have had incidences of our routine reports being misinterpreted by the media.

Dedicating few tweets to explain how we @NCDCgov share our data and how we can work with the media in developing the right messages for #Nigerians

#NCDCSundayReflections

As we have done for the last three years, every week we publish a National Weekly Epidemiological Report.

This provides data and information on epidemic prone diseases in Nigeria.

When numbers exceed a threshold, we declare an outbreak and publicly announce this

Unfortunately, the data in our WER is sometimes misrepresented - leading to stories capable of causing panic.

E.g, since we reported the first cases of #monkeypox in 2017, we’ve been recording sporadic cases weekly. There is better awareness & improved capacity to manage cases

Communications is very critical to our work at NCDC. We have organised training sessions for media personnel, we respond to queries and utilise many strategies to ensure an open NCDC.

We ask the media to work with us for better representation of epidemiological data

With Nigeria’s tropical climate, population density, movements from rural to urban areas etc, we live in perfect conditions for infectious diseases to spread.

Our work at @NCDCgov is to build a strong system that can quickly detect and respond to disease outbreaks