NSSF to Vaccinate One Million Nigerians

The Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund, a non-for-profit institution established as a partnership between the Global Citizen and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, is set to vaccinate one million people in Nigeria while solving vaccine hesitancy, writes Rebecca Ejifoma

Since the chaotic outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe last year, getting people vaccinated became the solution towards mitigating the spread of the virus following the non-pharmaceutical interventions like wearing of nose masks, handwashing, and physical distancing.

Bridging the Gap

Several organisations like the Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund (NSSF) made it a priority to bridge the gap of vaccine shortage and hesitancy as some of the factors that may affect the country’s goal to achieve COVID-19 herd immunity, the post impact of COVID-19 on the health and economic sector of Nigeria among its other focus for this year and next year. These were the words of the General Manager of NSSF, Dr Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko, at a webinar with newsmen in Lagos State.

According to Chinye-Nwoko, the NSSF has three major quests off its sleeves for this year and next year. Among them is vaccination. “NSSF was on to solve the post impact of COVID on the health and economic sector of Nigeria. The first was to assist vulnerable populations in Nigeria, that is those who would be most hit from the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

“The NSSF decided to assist in vaccinating one million Nigerians, of course it has to be the most vulnerable Nigerians that will otherwise not be vaccinated. And we have a two-approach for it. The first is to collaborate with partner organisations to purchase more vaccines for Nigeria, and the second is to solve the vaccine hesitancy in Nigeria.”

While conceding that a lot of people are quite reluctant to get vaccinated despite availability, Chinye-Nwoko said this is owing to the fact that these people are simply either not willing or they don’t know the benefits of the vaccine. “So we are going to be doing a bit of advocacy to promote the uptake of the vaccine so that we can get hold of this pandemic once and for all”.

Benefits

In the words of the GM, one benefit that a lot of Nigerians overlook is that getting the vaccine not only protects them, but it also protects vulnerable populations. “We know that by vulnerable population, the elderly are more vulnerable in terms of getting adverse effects of COVID-19, death is the last spectrum. There are several adverse effects like permanent lung damage that a lot of clinicians are noticing with the COVID.

“So even after people have recovered they still have lung damage that lead to other lung disease in the future and so a person not taking the vaccine is not only because your immunity is strong, what of other people whose immunity isn’t that strong, people living with comorbidities, sickle cell patients or diabetics or people with hypertension, even children are beginning to come down with symptoms of COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, Chinye-Nwoko is worried about the Delta variant, which is beginning to affect a lot of children. “A lot of children under 12 are not taking the vaccine yet. So, we are exposing the children that already have comorbidities like cardiac diseases, holes in the heart or sickle cell anemia. We are exposing them because we will be in contact with them. So the vaccine is not only saving your life, if we look beyond ourselves and say, ‘I don’t have a low immunity my body can fight it’, what about the people that are susceptible?”

For the GM, when they get about 80 to 90 per cent of the population vaccinated, the remaining 10 or 20 per cent that are skeptical are protected. However, she cautioned, “We need to get there right now. We are one per cent nowhere near that”.

Strengthening Health System

Beyond vaccination, the NSSF has also mapped out plans to strengthen the health system. “We know that out of all the sectors that were impacted by COVID-19 the health sector is the first. So, making the health sector recover from the assault of the pandemic was our second objective while our third objective is to re-skill the youth to help post COVID-19 to regain economic stability.

Accordingly, the GM acknowledged that during the pandemic a lot of people lost their means of livelihood. Thus, NSSF came up with the aim to re-skill the youth to make them more economically competitive in the post COVID-19 world, knowing that the skills that were required pre-COVID-19 may not be the skills that will be required post.

She emphasised: “The activity we plan is a youth-focus campaign. It’s going to focus on artistic expression of Nigerian youth using readily available digital tools. We know that a great proportion of our population is the youth, and we also know that the youth are influencers (they have a lot of ability because of social media) to influence peer behaviours. So if we target the youths we have more influence over the information.”

Complimenting Government’s Effort

When the NSSF was created, the GM said one of its statements is to add to what the federal government is doing. “Our help is additional, not supplementary. We are not working in silo, we are working with the federal government. We are already in conversations with the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency and they have done a fantastic job in terms of storage and distribution to the 36 states.”

And in terms of procurement of the one million vaccines, Chinye-Nwoko assured newsmen that the NSSF would work with the federal government to see that they get these one million doses.

Call to Nigerians

With some Nigerians yet to accept the idea of vaccination, the NSSF boss urged everyone to get vaccinated. “Get vaccinated. If you haven’t, join the train of believers, get vaccinated, encourage your colleagues, and family members to get vaccinated. COVID-19 is real. I think we are moving out of the denial phase. So yes, jump on this moving train and get vaccinated.”