Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

Govt to immunize 2m children in Katsina against measles

By Emeka Anuforo and Segun Olaniyi, Abuja
25 November 2015   |   11:23 pm
As part of the ongoing National Measles Campaign, the Katsina State Government is targeting two million children for immunization against measles across the state. The targeted children are under the ages of nine and 59 months. The Director, Public Health Care of the State, Dr. Lawal Aliyu Rabeh, disclosed this at the ongoing 2015 campaign…

Measles-immunizationAs part of the ongoing National Measles Campaign, the Katsina State Government is targeting two million children for immunization against measles across the state.

The targeted children are under the ages of nine and 59 months.

The Director, Public Health Care of the State, Dr. Lawal Aliyu Rabeh, disclosed this at the ongoing 2015 campaign at Kudu three in Katsina Local Government Area of the state.

Rabeh explained that all the 34 local governments and 361 wards has at least five teams to work on at the designated vaccination centres with each of the local government having a specific number of targeted children.

He explained how the team of vaccinators in each centre would move from one village to another, to ensure that all children in the state are immunized, adding that adequate vaccines were provided to meet the targeted number of children across the state.

He stressed: “The vaccine we collected is over two million and we believe it is quite enough for us to cover all the eligible children in the state and we have already distributed it according to the targets for each local government area since the campaign started.

“Basically what the state suppose to have given has already been given, we purchased our AEFI kits and we distributed it in every pick spots where activities is going on and hopefully we are expecting a coverage of 95 per cent this year.”

He urged parents and caregivers in the state to make best use of the exercise and ensure that their children and wards were vaccinated, adding that after the five- day exercise, the vaccines would be made available in hospitals across the state for the continuous immunisation of children.

He thanked the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPCHDA), World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international donors for their support to the exercise.

Director of Health, Bagarawa Local Government Area, Mrs. Amina Bamako said the level of progress had been excellent because so many people wanted their children to be immunised, adding that women are trouping out with their children to have this vaccination and I think we have covered almost 80 per cent of what we planned since the campaign started.

Also speaking, Director of Health, Rimi Local Government, Aminu Yahaya said they had recorded tremendous progress as at day three of the campaign, urging the women to bring their child for vaccination so that the outbreak of measles could be controlled to the barest minimum.

0 Comments