The Federal Government has announced that it is set to commence immunisation for children from the ages of 0-23 months at covid-19 vaccination centres, in a bid to reduce diseases that affect children and also get parents to bring their children along when getting their covid shots.
This was disclosed in a statement by Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) at the National COVID-19 vaccines weekly briefing on Tuesday, in Abuja.
He added that due to Nigeria’s vaccinated population, most of the mutating variants has mild symptoms in Nigeria, adding that if they weren’t vaccinated, the FG can’t predict how the cases would have turned out as vaccination prevents severe diseases.
What the NPHCDA is saying about immunisation
Shuaib added that under the Covid-19 mass vaccination plan, the FG plans to integrate the campaign with childhood immunization and other PHC services:
“What this simply means is that alongside the Covid-19 vaccines, childhood vaccines will also be available at covid sites.
“Parents or guardians with children aged zero to 23 are urged to take them along to the vaccination sites, as the childhood vaccines protect against polio, whooping cough, measles, yellow fever, tetanus, tuberculosis and other childhood preventable disease.”
He added that this is to ensure that while the FG tries hard to prevent the transmission of covid-19, it does not neglect other PHC services or even have outbreaks of childhood vaccine-preventable on its hands.
On vaccination, he revealed that Jigawa and Lagos have each vaccinated about 1.5 million eligible Nigerians with the first dose, while the FCT, Nasarawa, Lagos and Delta are leading on second dose administration with more than 10% of eligible populations in each state already vaccinated.
“Nigeria has not recorded any death arising from Covid-19 vaccination, this should convince anyone that covid-19 vaccines are safe,” he added
The NPHCDA also revealed that as at January 24th, 2021, in 36 States + the FCT, 14,093,873 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination were reached with the first dose while 5,252,406 of total eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination reached with the second dose.
