2.8m Vaccines Awaited as House C’ttee Decries Lax Preparedness by Agencies

James Emejo in Abuja

The Executive Secretary, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaibu, wednesday said it was awaiting to take delivery of about 2.83 million doses of vaccines to contain the current outbreak of the deadly Cerebral Spinal Meningitis (CSM), known as Meningitis which has claimed several lives in five Northern states.

Speaking during an emergency meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Health Care Services on the outbreak of the disease, he said the vaccines would be delivered from the United Kingdom and India.

Represented by the Director of Community Health Services in the agency, Dr Emmanuel Odu, Shuaibu said the first batch of the vaccines, comprising 823,000 doses, would arrive from UK, while two million would come from India.

He said: “We’re expecting 823,000 doses from the UK any moment from now and that will be delivered to the affected states. We have made contacts with the company that manufactures the Type C vaccines in India for two million doses to be delivered to us.”

He told the lawmakers that the agency had already disbursed 500,000 vaccines to the affected states and that the distribution commenced in Zamfara State yesterday.

However, the lawmakers, led by the Deputy Chairman, Hon. Usman Muhammad (APC, Kaduna) was angry that the agency began taking action late after many Nigerians have lost their lives.

He said as representatives of the people, they were dismayed that the epidemic killed many people without proper action from the relevant government agencies.

The lawmakers also sought to know if the vaccines were preventive or curative.

Responding, Odu said the reason why they were starting late was because the vaccines had to be approved by an international body before its distribution.

He said: “Because of the nature of Type C, the vaccines are not freely available. Availability is controlled by the International Response Group through WHO.”

He added that the vaccines are “scarce and very expensive.”

He,  however, assures that health agencies were on top of the situation adding that that the outbreak was contained as soon as possible.

Also,  Head of Health Emergency Preparedness Response at the National Centre for Disease Control, Dr John Oladejo said the agency has ensure deployment of emergency response teams to all the affected states in addition to creating Emergency Operations Centres (EOCs) being coordinated from Abuja.