Community engagement and participation have being described as key to achieving more than 85 per cent improved immunisation coverage in
Nigeria.
The Technical Assistant of the Niger State Emergency Routine Immunisation Coordinating Center (SERICC) , Dr Funsho Yusuf stated
this when members of the Coalition of Civil Society and Media on Maternal and Newborn Child in Niger State (COMiN) paid SERICC team an
advocacy visit.
He said where communities are not involved in the planning, implementation and evaluation of any services; they would not see the need for it, own it and sustain it.
He said the 2016/2017 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey for Nigeria showed 33 percent Penta coverage for the country meaning that over 40
million children were not fully immunized which brought about a public health emergency with immunization in 2017.
Dr Yusuf added that led to the birth of National Emergency Routine Immunization Coordinating Center (NERICC) to oversee the overall
coordination of Routine Immunization (RI) activities in 18 selected state of which Niger was included.
He said at the state level, all the formal RI working groups were collapsed into SERICC and LERICC at the local government level with the sole aim of achieving 85 percent coverage as against the 33
percent coverage.
The technical assistant noted that the aim of NERICC, SERICC and LERICC approach was to improve the detection and responsiveness of
resolution of RI gaps, such as lack of community engagement, participation, vaccine availability, poor data management and conduct of planned, fixed and outreach sessions.
He said the aim was also to strengthen leadership and accountability
as they have realised that one of the drawn back in RI was the poor
attitude of healthcare workers who need to be held accountable.
