…Nigeria ranks highest with 2.3m zero dose children globally
By Hassan Zaggi
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization’s (GAVI)- popularly referred to as the vaccine alliance, has concluded plans to save the lives of over 5.6 million people in Nigeria by 2030, the Interim Chief Executive Officer, David Marlow, has disclosed.
He disclosed this when the team from GAVI together with the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, paid a visit to Estu Karu in his palace in Nasarawa State, yesterday.
The visit was to enable the GAVI team have first hand experience of theprogress made so far in terms of investments in immunization and Primary Health Care. It is also to see clearly the challenges that continue to prevent the government from reaching children with life-saving vaccines, despite all of the investments that have been made.
Marlow, however, regretted that Nigeria has the largest zero dose population in the world, with 2.3 million children.
“We spoke earlier, with the Honourable Minister, Professor Pate about also the future opportunity to prevent deaths in Nigeria and the potential is by 2030 to save 5.6 million people’s lives, and that does not even exclude many other potential vaccines such as malaria that we can bring to this country.
“So our partnership is so important to us and we will do everything that we can to support the communities and to serve the country.
“I’m here to listen, to listen carefully to what you have to tell us, so that we can go back and strengthen the work that we do,” the GAVI Chief said.
He noted that: “It is for me a great privilege to be here today with you and to really connect and see how you are facing the challenges of health in your communities, and how we can support you to help in strengthening your primary health care systems. And also to make sure we understand your need and your challenges.
“Because GAVI is here to look after the countries that we work in, and your voices therefore matters. And we would continue the strong partnership that we built over many years since the year 2000.
“We have been active in Nigeria and although there has been many accomplishments in making progress in overall health care in the country, there is still a huge amount of work to be done.”
Earlier, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is determined to improve the health and general wellbeing of Nigerians.
He insisted that vaccines work, they are safe and that they are the most important tools used to save millions of lives of children.
“Vaccines work and they are the most cost effective tools for saving the lives of children.
“They’re safe, and they work and they protect many children from diseases like measles, like polio, diarrheal diseases, Pneumonia.
“But there are still many children that we miss, and that we need to do more to ensure that we reduce those who are completely missing the zero children and as a government, the federal government is committed to work with the state government and the community leaders to ensure that every Nigerian child ultimately gets the benefit of this life saving tools of vaccines, as well as treatment of other diseases.
“They are vaccines against cancer, for instance, which affects a woman. The third largest burden of cancer in Nigeria is actually the cancer that affects women. There is a vaccine for it,” the Minister said.
Prof. Pate explained that the visit to the place of the Etsu Karu was to seek for his support and guidance as the federal government intensified efforts to improve the health of children through immunization.
“And consistent with that spirit of transformation, we realize and we know that traditional leaders are the custodians of tradition.
“You are with the people and when we partner with you, we succeed. We saw that like polio, we saw that with many of the children that had been done in other areas because you are advocates of what matters to the people.
“So it is in that spirit, that when we engage with global partners like GAVI that are here with us we felt that we should come up and present ourselves to reaffirm the partnership that exists within the government and yourselves to ask for your support, prayers, guidance, because you did a lot and you’re continuing to do a lot of work to help advance the cause of health and immunization in particular.”
In his remarks, the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Developemnt Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, commended the Minister and the GAVI team for creating time for the visit.
He noted that the visit has a lot of significance and that it will yield tremendous result in the days ahead.
“Over the course of the next few weeks, the importance of this visit will manifest. You will not hear from me, you will hear from the royal father when David Marlow and his team go back. “It will be our responsibility to channel through your Commissioner for Health, your Executive Secretary, State Primary Healthcare Board, some of the dividends of this visits. So I will say you are a very lucky people,” Dr. Shuaib, said when addressing the residents of the areas.
