By Lizzy Carr
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has lamented that Bauchi State has a total number of 556,000 zero dose children in Thirteen local government areas thereby putting their chances of survival at risk.
Chief of Field Office (CFO), Bauchi Field Office of UNICEF, Dr Nuzhat Rafique stated this while handing over 2.5m doses of Polio vaccines to the State Government preparatory to the 2025 Polio immunization campaign.
While at the State Cold store situated in the premises of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi on Thursday, Nuzhat Rafique stated that the polio campaign will start in the 13 Zero Dose LGAs on the 24th and then the entire State on 26th to 29th of April.
“This is very critical, very important, it is a make or break event for us. This two campaigns this year are the last chance for Nigeria and for Bauchi to contribute towards the eradication of Polio in Nigeria.”
She stressed that, all communities should cooperate and start mobilizing of caregivers to come to the vaccination centres or bring out their eligible children for the immunization.
“This is not only for them, but for the generations to come, for the whole future of Nigeria and the children born in Nigeria. If we are Polio free, they will be much better citizens.”
For this campaign, UNICEF is coordinating with the Primary Healthcare Development Board and the First Lady to ensure a successful campaign.
“The primary healthcare development board has taken delivery of the vaccine which we supported in bringing in, a total of 2.5m doses of Polio vaccine is already here in the cold room, then we have more than 50.000 drops, we have 25000 pen markers to be used for marking fingers of children vaccinated.”
Nuzhat Rafique emphasized the need for journalists to take up the responsibility to pass the of the polio immunization messages to the communities to bring out their children for the immunization .
“Every child U-5 is a target for the campaign but in those 556,000 children who are zero dose, we are hoping that after now, there will not be zero dose in Bauchi again ,it is not only Polio for them, it is all the vaccines package that need to reach them and once Polio reaches them and they start getting immunized, we will reduce the number of zero dose children.”
Also speaking, UNICEF Health Officer, Patrick Akor, explained that there 160,250 doses that will be used for the round of immunization to reach children between ages 0 – 59 months.
He also assured that UNICEF has provided pen markers that would be used to finger mark the children already vaccinated for proper and adequate data collection.
“We are going to ensure that in all the local governments, all teams have adequate vaccines during the implementation exercise,” he assured.
A representative from the Bauchi state Primary Healthcare Development Board, Bappah Jika confirmed the receipt of the vaccines from UNICEF and appreciated the Fund for the ‘life saving’ support.
He assured that adequate publicity will be embarked upon to create awareness for the campaign so that the target will be achieved.(www.krestnews.com)