COVID-19 Vaccination: FG integrates childhood immunization and other PHC services

As Nigeria moves to the next phase of its COVID-19 mass vaccination coverage, Federal government says it is integrating childhood immunization and other primary health care services.

The Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib disclosed this at a press briefing on COVID-19 vaccination update on Tuesday in Abuja.

Dr Faisal explained that alongside the COVID-19 vaccines, childhood vaccines will also be available at COVID-19 vaccination sites.

According to him, “This is to ensure that while we are trying so hard to control the transmission of COVID-19, we do not neglect other PHC services or even have outbreaks of childhood vaccine preventable diseases on our hands”.

He urged parents and guardians with children aged zero to 23 months to take them along to the Covid-19 vaccination sites for childhood vaccines that protect against polio, whooping cough, measles, yellow fever, tetanus, tuberculosis, and other childhood preventable diseases.

As at Tuesday, January 25th 2022, 14,093,873 eligible persons have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria while 5,252,406 eligible Nigerians have been fully vaccinated. 416,980 Nigerians have also received their booster dose.

States performances revealed that Nasarawa, Jigawa, FCT, Ogun and Kwara have remained the top 5 performing states on COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

While Jigawa and Lagos have each vaccinated about 1.5million eligible Nigerians with the first dose, FCT, Nasarawa, Lagos and Delta are leading on second dose administration with more than 10% of eligible populations in each of the states already vaccinated.

NPHCDA said the daily Covid-19 vaccination coverage was about 100,000 people per day last year and have more than doubled between December 2021 and January 2022, to over 200,000 per day.

The Executive Director commended the COVID-19 vaccination leading states governors and urged that other states follow suit.

He recommended that state governors convene a meeting of LGA Chairmen, traditional, political, religious leaders and the health team and charge them with the responsibility of ensuring that the populace within their constituencies are duly vaccinated.

“The Governor should charge the LGA Chairmen and health teams to develop a daily, weekly and monthly Covid-19 and Childhood vaccination targets based on the total eligible populations.

“The Governor can meet with the LGA Chairmen and health teams on a weekly basis, to review the results of the campaigns and confirm if these targets are being met. This can also be an agenda on the weekly State Executive Council meetings.

“The Governor can apply accountability mechanisms to the vaccination process by publicly rewarding LGA teams that perform the highest and sanctions teams that do not meet the minimum requirements despite the supports. This can be done in a fortnightly ceremony where the Governor shakes the best performers and issue certificates or plaques of excellence.

“We want to acknowledge the strong leadership displayed by many Governors in ensuring that their citizens are vaccinated and encourage them to do even more, so we can further improve our vaccination coverage”.

Still stressing on the importance of COVID-19 vaccination, the NPHCDA boss noted that during the holiday season, the number of COVID-19 cases increased globally because several unvaccinated individuals were migrating from the cities to the rural areas and back to the cities.

“Globally, we saw the emergence of new variants such as IHU variant in France which is said to have 46 mutations, Deltacron in Cyprus and the Omicron variant still being highly infectious with a BA.2 subvariant rapidly spreading. More of our citizens were coming down with the infection.

“Luckily for our vaccinated population, those who came down with the COVID-19 infection had mild symptoms which they managed at home due to the immunity the vaccination provided them. If they were not vaccinated, we cannot predict how these cases would have turned out. Vaccination prevents you from severe disease, hospitalization and death.

“The reason for the emergence of these variants, is because there is still a large proportion of the eligible population who have not yet been vaccinated and this has given the virus time to mutate and fight back.

“It is important that we protect ourselves and our loved ones by getting the jab. Our vaccination exercise was expanded to enable all eligible persons have easier access. All vaccination sites are open to eligible persons, 18 years and above for first, second and booster doses. We call on Nigerians to avail themselves of this opportunity in the on-going mass vaccination exercise to get vaccinated against COVID-19” he added.