- Targets to vaccinate 1m in 700 days
From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has disclosed that Nigeria is the second country in the world with the highest zero dose children after India’s 2.7 million.
This is even as it has said that with collaboration with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), GAVI, the World Health Organisation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, over a million of the zero dose children in the country can be vaccinated in 700 days.
UNICEF Nigeria, Chief of Health, Eduardo Celades, made the disclosure at a media briefing on the State of the World’s Children (SOWC) report at the UN House, Abuja.
The report states that in just three years, the world has lost more than a decade of progress in immunisation.
Celades listed weak health system (which include no enough nurses, doctors, midwives) and the COVID-19 pandemic as being responsible for the high number of zero dose children.
He said COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted childhood immunisation, with 67 million children missing out entirely or partially on routine immunisation between 2019 and 2021, leaving them vulnerable to a range of preventable diseases.
The UNICEF Nigeria, Chief of Health, said the fund has worked to increase child survival by combating the lagging immunisation rates among children in Nigeria.
“With the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, GAVI, the World Health Organisation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we developed a “zero-dose” strategy to reach children in the 100 most deprived local government areas in 18 states, laying the foundation for targeted intervention. Strengthening the health care system, expanding access to underserved populations, and focusing on primary health care – including newborn, child, adolescent, maternal and reproductive health – were key to reaching children and their families.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Sun on UNICEF’s objective to vaccinate the zero dose children, he said: “Our objective is that in the next two years, more or less in 700 days, to reduce the number of zero dose children by 30 percent. We believe we can achieve or even surpass the target of reducing to half this 2.2 million children.
“We are so proud that last year despite COVID, we saw a lot of progress when we looked at the routine data. We were able to increase by almost seven percent the number of children vaccinated. So, I believe that if we put together resources with clearer zero doses strategy in mind working together with NPHCDA, government and partners, we can achieve the target that in 700 days we can vaccinate almost one million children.”
Celades speaking on how Nigeria can tackle the issue of weak health systems contributing to the rising number of zero dose children, said: “We believe from UNICEF side that Nigeria is facing a human resources crisis, the standard of doctors and nurses are below international standard. We have only less than four nurses per 10,000. That is not enough to provide services that the population need.
“I think we need to do a coalition of partners with government, with private sector to try to attract and retain our health workers. If not all our efforts will not succeed. We need to allocate more resources to health in the state and federal level to hire these doctors, nurses and midwives as well as community health workers. We need to improved their living conditions especially at community areas, pay incentives if need.
“We also need to ensure that in every ward there is a functional 24/7 primary health care facility in place.”
The UNICEF Nigeria, Chief of Health, while giving statistics of what has done in Nigeria, said over 1 million additional zero-dose children have been immunised, 15,000 additional community health workers trained.
He said over 1,700 Primary Health Care facilities (out of 3,476) in 14 States meet PHC minimum standards, 25 health facilities have functional level 2 newborn units and State-level and national capacities built to prepare and respond to public health emergencies.
