By Asmau Ahmad
No fewer than 72 teams including town criers have been deployed for the house-to-house polio immunization for children from 0 to 59 months in Yola North Metropolitan Local Government Area in Adamawa.
The Executive Secretary of the Local Government Primary Healthcare Department, Mallam Salihu Bello, made this known on Saturday in Yola while speaking to newsmen on the commencement of the 4-day Supplementary Immunization Plus Days (SIPDs 1) in the area.
Bello said there are also 59 Special Teams that move around immunizing children playing on the streets, while another 22 teams known as Fix Post were stationary at strategic places for the immunization.
“Before today’s commencement of the 4-day SIPDs 1, we had immunized 33,294 children from Thursday to Friday. So we had the Direct Polio Vaccine (DPV) on the streets to create awareness for the SIPDs.
Bello said as for now, no report of rejection was recorded in any household as experienced in the last immunization in February, adding that the few cases recorded in February were resolved with the help of religious leaders.
He lauded the active role being played by traditional and religious leaders in promoting the campaign against polio and other diseases and urged them to sustain the tempo.
“I also want to appeal to parents and guardians to bear in mind that polio and other vaccines are the right of the child and since the child cannot bring himself to access the free vaccines they should
avail the child the opportunity to get the vaccines.
“Polio vaccine in particular cannot be found in chemists; so parents need to patronize our centres for routine immunization which is now daily as against weekly that was the case before,” Bello said.
