By Haruna Gimba
The Sokoto State Government said it is targeting 1.8 million under-five year’s children in the ongoing four-day polio immunisation exercise in the state.
The State Deputy Governor, Ahaji Ahmed Aliyu, who made the disclosure in Sokoto, said that the exercise, which commenced on Saturday, would end on Tuesday.
Alhaji Aliyu, who is also the Chairman of the State’s Task Force on polio immunisation, said efforts were on to achieve over 100 per cent coverage of the targeted children in all the 23 Local Government Areas of the state.
He said the state government had distributed about 1.83 million doses of Oral Polio Vaccines (OPV) across the state.
The deputy governor said that no fewer than 9,429 health personnel were conducting the exercise.
The Permanent Secretary in the state Ministry of Health, Alhaji Almustapha Othman, said measures had been put in place to ensure the full acceptance of the exercise by parents.
He expressed happiness that parents in the state were now wholly accepting the exercise.
In his remarks, the Executive Secretary, State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Sani Labaran, explained that social mobilisation of all the residents had been intensified, to ensure the acceptance of the OPV by the parents.
