Kano to immunize 3.2million under-five children against polio
Plans are underway by the Kano State government to immunise over 3.2 million under-five children during the August 2019 National Immunisation Plus Days (NIPDS) which kicked off on Saturday across the 44 local government areas of the state.
Briefing reporters on the activities lined up for the weeklong event, the permanent secretary in the state Ministry of Health, Alhaji Bala Muhammad, noted that the increase recorded in the last polio immunisation exercise was a result of house-to-house walk-through sensitisation embarked upon by the ministry.
According to him, the issue of rejection of polio vaccine by some parents has also been reduced, as traditional, religious leaders and other stakeholders are fully involved in the mobilisation exercise which has ensured adequate compliance by parents.
He further noted that “the August campaign will be conducted across all the local government areas with special emphasis on the eight metropolitan local government areas. This is to firm up immunity of the areas in view of the recent upsurge of remnants of circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Virus (cVDPV) discovered in an environmental sample collected in Tarauni Local Government Area.
“During the campaign, all children under the age of five years will be vaccinated against polio and other vaccine preventable diseases. The campaign will therefore be conducted at designated health facilities and other fixed posts in eight metropolitan local government areas, while house-to-house teams will go about administering Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) in the remaining 36 rural local government areas of the state.”
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He said training have been conducted at all levels, while materials and vaccines required for the exercise have also been distributed to all the 484 political wards across the 44 local government areas of the state, adding that logistics and other supports from partners have also been made available for the exercise.
Muhammad further noted that the vaccine will be given to eligible children together with measles and yellow fever vaccines for children at nine months, adding that “it is on record that a lot of resources have been committed into Supplemental Immunisation Activities (SIAs) campaigns targeted at eligible children for immunisations and it is now over 60 months without a single case of Wild Polio Virus (WPV) in which very soon, Kano State will be removed from the polio list.”