2.5 million children vulnerable to threatening diseases

An outbreak of three cases of Circulating Variant Poliovirus have again been confirmed in Kano plugging children under the age of five years vulnerable to the dangerous disease.

Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) has the ability to cause paralysis and spread from person to person. Although the form of virus is rare, it can cause outbreaks, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates.

The fresh cases were recorded three months after eight cases of the polio were reported in Kano. Chief of UNICEF Kano Field Office, Rahama Rihood Mohamed Farah disclosed this on Tuesday during a media dialogue on Child Sensitive Budgeting in Kano.

The UNICEF chief worried that despite the efforts of government to improving living standard of children, available data indicated deplorable state children leave in Kano.

According to him, a multi-dimensional data indicated 143,000 children under five die each year before reaching their fifth birthday in Kano for various diseases.

Citing similar data of about 6.5 million children, approximately 2.9 million children are not fully immunised, Mr.Farah insisted that the figures are stark reminder of the urgent need to strengthen child survival interventions in Kano.

Besides the scaring figures, the UNICEF boss worried over government underfunding and declining allocation of social sectors including health, education, and social welfare despite the increasing demands.

He lamented invisibility gap in state budgeting where children’s needs are embedded in larger sectors and insufficiency provisions for critical areas like nutrition, early childhood development, and child protection.

“To address these, UNICEF calls for action urging government to mandate child-sensitive budgeting across all MDAs in the MTEF submissions and annual budgets. Make child budgeting a standard agenda item.

“Champion increased and protected allocations for high-impact child survival, development, and protection programmes. Demand transparent, regular reporting on child expenditures and their impact.”

“We appealed to Media to report regularly on child wellbeing, budgets allocations, and service delivery gaps. Translate complex budget data into compelling stories that the public understands, provide a platform for discussions, and dialogue involving government, CSOs, communities, and children”. Farah said.