By Haruna Gimba
Kano State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Kabiru Ibrahim Getso, said the state recorded 650,000 cases of pneumonia infection among children annually.
He said available data has also shown that Pneumonia disease claims the lives of over 170,000 children annually in the country.
Dr. Getso said there was urgent need to combat the deadly disease so as to save the lives of children
Making the statement while flagging off the Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PVC), Getso said if the vaccine is effectively administered on children it is estimated that by the year 2018 about 170,000 children are going to be prevented from losing their lives in the country.
According to him, pneumonia is a deadly communal disease, adding that available statistic has shown that 800,000 children under the age of five years die every year globally.
“Statistic has also shown that about 170,000 children die annually in the country as a result of contracting pneumonia disease, is a very important disease, we need to do everything humanly possible to prevent it from claiming the lives of our children,” he said.
The commissioner further stated that pneumonia is a disease that affects everybody in the society, but children under the age of five and elderly were more prone to the disease hence the need to introduced the vaccine .
Our correspondent gathered that the vaccine will be administered to children under the age of one year, at the age of six, 10 and 14 weeks respectively, which indicated that children will have it three times in their lifetime.
