Abuja – United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has disclosed that Nigeria is the second country in the world with the highest number of non-immunised children after India’s 2.7 million.
Chief of Health for UNICEF Nigeria, Eduardo Celades, stated this at a media briefing on the State of the World’s Children
Report at the UN House, Abuja said in just three years, the world has lost more than a decade of progress in immunization.
Celades listed weak health systems, which included insufficient number of nurses, doctors and midwives, and COVID-19 pandemic as responsible for the high number of zero dose children.
He said COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted childhood immunization, with 67 million children missing out entirely or partially on routine immunization between 2019 and 2021, leaving them vulnerable to a range of preventable diseases.
He, however, said with the collaboration of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), World Health Organization, GAVI, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, over a million of the zero immunized children in Nigeria could be vaccinated in 700 days.
The UNICEF Nigeria, Chief of Health, said the fund has worked to increase child survival by combating the lagging immunization rates among children in Nigeria.
“With the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, GAVI, the World Health Organization, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we developed a zero-dose strategy to reach children in the 100 most deprived local government areas in 18 states, laying the foundation for targeted intervention.
Strengthening the health care system, expanding access to underserved populations, and focusing on primary health care – including newborn, child, adolescent, maternal and reproductive health – were key to reaching children and their families,” he said.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Sun on UNICEF’s objective to vaccinate the zero dose children, he said: “Our objective is that in the next two years, more or less in 700 days, to reduce the number of zero dose children by 30 per cent
“we believe we can achieve or even surpass the target of reducing to half this 2.2 million children.
‘We are so proud that last year despite COVID, we saw a lot of progress when we looked at the routine data.
” We were able to increase by almost seven per cent the number of children vaccinated.
“So, I believe that if we put together resources with clearer zero doses strategy in mind, working together with NPHCDA, government and partners, we can achieve the target that in 700 days we can vaccinate almost one million children,” he said.
Celades said Nigeria was facing a human resources crisis and that the standard of doctors and nurses were below international standard.
“We have only less than four nurses per 10,000 patients, that is not enough to provide services that the population need.
” I think we need to do a coalition of partners with government, with private sector to try to attract and retain our health workers.
“If not all our efforts will not succeed. We need to allocate more resources to health in the state and federal level to hire these doctors, nurses and midwives as well as community health workers.
” We need to improve their living conditions, especially at community areas, pay incentives if needed and ensure that in every ward there is a functional 24/7 primary health care facility in place.” (The Sun/vitalnewsngr.com/
