By Asmau Ahmad
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Health and Human Services Secretariat, says every child in the territory will be immunised against polio and other diseases.
Mr Adamu Bappa, the Secretary, Health.and Human services Secretariat, gave the assurance on Wednesday while addressing newsmen to unveil activities for the African Vaccination Week (AVW) in Abuja.
He said that the theme of the vaccination week, “Protected Together: Vaccines Work” would celebrate stakeholders who helped to ensure that all citizens were protected.
” The AVW was established and endorsed by UN Member States in the African region.
“Each year, a suitable theme is chosen to reflect current regional priorities and the public health realities.
” This year’s theme, “Protected Together” will be celebrated between April 22 and April 30.
” The campaign will celebrate health vaccine heroes, from parents and community members to health workers and innovators who helped to ensure that we are all protected through the power of vaccines,” he said.
Bappa who said that the FCT had done very well in vaccination, added that much needed to be to vaccinate children against polio.
“As at March, Penta III coverage for FCT stood at 90.5 per cent while measles is 81.2 per cent.
“We also had 95.6 per cent coverage on the yellow fever mass vaccination campaign to attain first position amongst six participating states.
” In spite of the gains made in reaching children with vaccination, we have continued to see outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases,” he said.
He said that most of the children who missed out on vaccination were the ones who lived in far flung communities.
He assured that the health secretariat would intensify efforts to ensure that all eligible persons were vaccinated.
“Most of the children missing out are those who live in far and hard to reach communities and the displaced population in Internally Displace Persons camps.
” In order for everyone to survive and thrive, we will intensify efforts to ensuring that all eligible persons receive the life saving benefits of vaccines.
“The main goal of the campaign is to raise awareness about the critical importance of all immunisation throughout life,” he said.
The Secretary said that for the 2019 campaign, FCT teams would intensify continious sensitisation and mobilisation, emphasising the value of vaccines to the health of children.
He added that there would be reward for parents and caregivers of best performing children during the immunisation and integrated service delivery using health camps at designated sites.
” The designated sites are in Kadusa, Wusa, Gongola, New Kuchingoro and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps,” he said.
He urged the media to help disseminate the immunisation message to reach one out of every 10 kids who still did not have access to vaccines.
He assured that caregivers posted to remote parts of the territory for the immunisation exercise would get additional insensitives to encourage them to perform optimally.
