By Ndidi Chukwu
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has announced commencement of house-to-house vaccination of children against polio as part of its continuous effort to boost population immunity of children between zero to five years for Nigeria to achieve its eradication status. Executive Director of the Agency Dr Ado Muhammed in a press conference to commence the nation’s immunization activities for the month of October announced that 32 million children will be vaccinated.
He said “Nigeria will continue to vaccinate these children irrespective of their previous immunization status” This is in effort to ensure that Nigeria attains its goal of total polio eradication by 2017.
“the next polio immunization campaign in 11 polio vulnerable States (Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto Yobe and Zamfara) commences tomorrow, Saturday 17th October 2015. It is targeted at all children aged zero to five years, irrespective of their previous immunization status. A total of 32million children are targeted during the campaign” said Dr Ado
“Already Nigeria has achieved 80-85% of population immunity for polio vaccines across the country “if we continue to improve on our activities we are very optimistic that we are going to eradicate polio by 2017” he said
He called on all caregivers to allow Vaccinators into their homes to immunize their children against polio as he Congratulated Nigerians for exiting the group of polio endemic countries after WHO delisted the nation from Polio endemic nations in September.
