NPHCDA Pledges to Bridge Immunisation Gaps in 100 LGAs

•HPV vaccination phase 2 to begin May

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The federal government has said it would ensure that the number of children with zero dose vaccination in the country was reduced substantially in the next two years.

It also said the second phase of single dose vaccination of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine (HPV) vaccine which commenced last October in 16 states and FCT would be rolled out in the remaining 20 states in May this year as planned.

Speaking in an interview with journalists in Abuja over the weekend, the Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) Dr. Muyi Aina, said the agency was going to intensify efforts at carrying out routine immunisation exercise, especially in about 100 Local Governments Areas that share substantial number of children with zero dose immunisation.

He said the routine immunisation services would be expanded to include mental health screening for Nigerians.

Aina said the agency had as at last year, identified about 100 local government areas in the country where children with zero dose vaccination are found.

He said states like Lagos, Kano and several others with high concentration of zero dose children were going to receive special attention.

The Executive Director said interventions carried out last year in some of the states, about half of the affected children were fully immunised.

“The plan is that over the next two years we are going reduce the number of these children that are not immunised substantially,” he said.

Aina also said the agency would be rolling out the vaccination campaign for the HPV vaccine in the remaining 21 states of the federation as planned in May this year.

He said the HPV vaccine was targeted at girls aged 9 to14 years.

He said the agency was making progress in efforts to tackle epidemic in the country, adding that substantial progress had been made in containing diphtheria outbreak.

Aina, further spoke on federal government’s strategy in the health sector, saying that it was anchored on three pillars to make quality healthcare services easily available to Nigerians.

He said one of the strategies was to ensure that there were functional primary health centres across the country.

Aina, who spoke on the outcome of a top management meeting of the agency convened to take stock of activities so far and to proffer suggestions on way forward, said: “We have identified a strategy which seeks to make every Nigerian have access to the basic services they need wherever they may reside in Nigeria.

“The strategy is anchored around three pillars and one of them is to focus on making quality primary health care services available. This has a number of components.

“The first is having primary health centres that work. As you are aware Nigeria has thousands of primary health care centres that the agency has been working with states and partners to try to support over the last several years.

“The federal government is determined to ensure that there is at least one functional primary health centre per ward across the country.

“In addition to this, the government has committed to doubling that number over the next four years to about 17,600 functional health facilities,” he said.

He explained that government would take into account the population and health needs of an area in deciding where the health facilities would be cited.  Aina said there are over 25,000 health facilities across the country at the moment.

He said: “We want to make sure that we invest in them, working with the states and our partners to have truly functional facilities.

“Right now, we have 8,300 primary health care centres that are being funded directly as part of the Basic Healthcare Provision Funds through the NPHCDA Gateway.

“Over the next four years, we are going to really be working to make them fully functional by making them have what they need to provide quality services.

 “We will ensure that they have the workforce, the commodities and technical assistance to make good use of the resources that they getting through the decentralised facility financing  and that have all the equipment and infrastructure including accommodation for the front line health workers that are working in the health centres. Secondly, we are also going to be expanding the number of facilities in Nigeria.

“As you are aware Nigeria has thousands of Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) that the agency has been working with states and partners to try to support over the last several years.”

In addition, the NPHCDA boss said the agency was poised to achieving the revamping 17,600 PHCs and restoring them into a functional state within the next four years as pledged by government.

According to him, government plans to rebuild some of them to a functional state.

He said the idea was to have as many functional PHCs as possible as a strategy to achieve Universal Health Coverage within the target period.

According to him another strategy was to ensure health security by working towards sustainable local production of health commodities to reduce dependence on imports.

“If you look at the situation before, we imported a lot of things but COVID taught us that you know when push comes to shove, you will be on your own. So because of that this government led by the president has mandated that we need to do everything to really jumpstart sustainability of our supply chains for health commodities, to see how can we be self-sustaining in many of this.

“And where we have to import that we have to make arrangements that are less sensitive to global trends and ups and downs,” he said

The NPHCDA boss further said government was focused on growing the number of quality health workers in the country as well as in putting in place adequate welfare packages conducive to make them perform their duties optimally.

In terms of the spread of healthcare facilities, Aina said the government would strive to ensure that Nigerians are equitably served.

“Ours is a very big country and not every place is equitably being served at the moment We will try to balance that up, by ensuring that every Nigerian is equal in the eyes of government.

“We are going to be expanding the number of facilities that are directly supported by the government. In addition to that, we are going to be investing quite a lot in the framework that will produce and retain frontline health workers at the health facilities.”