Abdulraheem Aodu
3 November 2008
Kaduna — The presidential initiative on immunization and child survival has been urged to make immunization a national priority while all endemic states have been urged to create task forces for wild poliovirus (WPV) eradication if Nigeria is to totally eradicate the virus by 2009.
The presidential initiative and forces to be established under the auspices of the state gover-nors are to ensure that proactive and real actions are taken to im-prove the quality and coverage of Immunization Plus Days (IPD) to ensure that all children are given adequate dosage to pre-vent the occurrence and trans-mission of the disease according to the expert review committee on polio eradication.
In a communiqué signed by its Chairman, Dr Bashir Umar after the 16th meeting on ways of stemming the spread and eli-minating the scourge in Nigeria next year, the committee also recommended the engagement of community leaders while it cal-led for the creation of a fo-rum of traditional and religious leaders to lead the reinvigorated fight against the disease next year.
"The World Health Assembly Polio Resolution had in May 2008 urged Nigeria to reduce the risk of international spread of poliovirus by quickly stopping the outbreak in Northern Nigeria through intensified eradication activities. This call led to the creation of High-level Task Force for Polio Eradication and Rou-tine Immunization in July, forma-tion of State Task Forces in seve-ral states as well as the creation of the Presidential Initiative on Polio Eradication and Child Sur-vival", said the communiqué.
However this has done little to stem the spread of the child killer disease as World Health Organisation findings shows that Nigeria remains among the six endemic countries in the world out of 19 countries where the disease exist. Though 12 countries in Africa currently suffer from the disease, Nigeria remains the only endemic Afri-can country.
"Six key states namely Kano, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Bauchi and Jigawa accounts for 80 percent of polio cases in the country even as the findings shows that the ongoing polio outbreak and spread is due to a failure to adequately vaccinate children. But the expert review committee report also showed that endemic states, which im-plemented previous recom-mendations like Kebbi and Jiga-wa states are seeing success."
The chairman, who is also the Director General of National Primary Healthcare Develop-ment Agency added that the appropriate use of monovalent and trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine will stop WPV1, maintain im-munity against WPV3 and stop cVDPV among Nigerian chil-dren. He however called for strengthening routine immuni-sation and enhancing IPD quality as ways of achieving eff-ective and efficient polio eradi-cation.
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