By Hassan Zaggi
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, has called on traditional leaders in the country to sensitize their followers on the many benefits of immunization and other services being provided at the Primary Health Care (PHC) centres across the country.
He made the call at the quarterly review meeting of the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee on PHC, in Abuja, on Thursday.
“May I use this opportunity to humbly remind your Royal Highnesses to continue to sensitize your communities about the benefits of immunization and other PHC services, the risk of non-vaccination and in particular, to continue to promote COVID-19 vaccination in your domains,” the Minister said.
While stressing that there is enough quantity of COVID-19 vaccines for all eligible Nigerians in all states, he urged them to ensure they uptake the vaccine against the disease.
Ehanire called on the royal fathers to “continue to encourage our people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and other vaccine preventable diseases as NPHCDA has integrated all these services to ensure that every vaccination site serves as a one stop site for the vaccination of the entire family.
“We need to quickly increase coverage across all states to achieve our national target of vaccinating at least 70% of eligible populations 18 years and older.”
He, however, applauded Nasarawa, Jigawa, Kano and Kaduna States who, according to him, have the highest fully vaccinated persons and have reached the 70% target of fully vaccinated eligible population for COVID-19 and urged other states to emulate them to enable the country build immunity against COVID-19 and reach the desired national coverage.
Speaking, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, appealed to the royal fathers to continue to promote Polio, COVID-19 and routine childhood immunization in their communities.
This, he said, is particularly important because for everyone to be protected, we all must be fully vaccinated.
He, however, disclosed that the NPHCDA is gradually expanding the partnership with royal fathers to the southern part of the country.
According to him, just last month, the Minister of Health inaugurated the Southeast Traditional Rulers Committee on PHC Delivery (SETRC) at Enugu and earlier in August, they group held its inaugural meeting.
These, Dr. Shuaib, reiterated, “have been achieved because we leveraged the lessons learnt from coordinating the NTLC.”
He called on the royal fathers to further strengthen community engagement as the risk of polio {is still very much with us).
“Apart from the fact that we are still contending with the challenge of cVPV2, the re-emergence of WPV in some African countries shows that all countries are vulnerable until the virus is totally eradicated worldwide.
This reinforces the saying that as long is polio is detected anywhere in the world, every child, everywhere is at risk,“ he noted.
