WHO, NPHCDA to immunize 930,000 children in Nigeria yearly

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) have concluded arrangements to immunise at least 930,000 children in Nigeria yearly in to cover the children who missed routine immunisation as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

WHO Team Lead, Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Polio Eradication, Dr. Kofi Boateng who revealed this during an engagement between the NPHCDA and states on optimised outreach strategy in Abuja, noted that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted routine immunization leading to about 33 million children not receiving any single vaccine in the African continent from 2019 to 2021.

He said, “The fact that these children had not received any vaccine is the reason why we are seeing a lot of outbreaks like measles, diphtheria, yellow fever and so on. As part of the preparation for the African vaccination week celebration, which is riding on the theme ‘the big catch up’, this meeting is to support Nigeria to prepare to catch up with about 6.2 million children that did not receive any vaccine from 2019 to 2021 in Nigeria”.

Boateng explained that a review of the immunization strategies was being done to ensure that health facilities in various states intensify the outreaches in sessions, so that “we can catch up on these numbers of children”.

He stated that the most effective strategy realised was the need to take the vaccination to the people via fixed sessions, outreach sessions and mobile sessions for a specific group of populations based on their proximity to the health facility.

Speaking further, he lamented that outreach sessions were not yielding the desired results and pledged WHO’s support to improve the number:

According to him, “What we have noticed is that in Nigeria for the outreach sessions that are supposed to go to the communities, you are not seeing the number of yield in terms of number of children vaccinated over a longer period. We are discussing the issue of partners supporting the state in terms of resourcing, and engaging the state authorities to make sure the funds are released to support this plan. In the WHO, we have a presence in all 36 states and we also have staff in almost every ward supporting polio eradication and other PHC services. So we will leverage that to support the government to make sure all plans at those levels are of high quality. WHO supports strategic policy, we also monitor what is happening. We have the teams in the fields that would be supporting the state in terms of coordination, planning and implementation”.

“In terms of implementation, we are going to participate in the training of health workers. We are going to monitor the progress of the process. We’re also going to assess the quality of services as a result of the outreach in terms of data on the actual number of children that are going to be vaccinated.

“We are hoping that by the end we have as partners with the government we have agreed that every year we’ll reduce the burden of zero doses by 15%. We hope that by the end of this, we’ll reduce that dose by that percentage”, Boateng stated.

Also speaking, the Executive Director of NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib stressed the need for a paradigm shift to ensure that parents make their children available for immunization and for healthcare workers to optimise every available opportunity to reach children, especially in hard-to-reach communities.

He noted that sometimes, parents find it difficult to take their children to health facilities that are very far from them adding that it will be easier and more effective to take the vaccines to them.

Shuaib observed that arrangements for special logistics have been made to take routine immunisation to hard-to-reach areas. These include using of boats in riverine areas, motorcycles, and bicycles in rocky and desert areas to take vaccines to the children.

On his part, the Director of Disease Control and Immunization, NPHCDA, Dr. Bassey Okposen said, “Most states were not conducting outreaches the way they should. We, therefore, drew up optimised strategies on how to make the outreaches better and share with them the optimised outreach strategy approach so they can do better. We’re also using the opportunity to talk to the states about the HPV vaccine that would be introduced on the 25th of September”.