By Abujah Racheal
As efforts continue to improve on the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine campaign across Nigeria, the U.S Centre for Disease Control (USCDC) has identified traditional leaders in northern Nigeria as key players in curbing the pandemic.
The Country Director of US-CDC, Dr. Mary Boyd, said this at the third Quarter review meeting of the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee on Primary Health Care (PHC), on Monday, in Abuja.
Boyd, who was represented by the director of immunisation, for USCDC Nigeria, Dr. Omotayo Bolu, said Northern leaders had in the past showed that they wielded some influence in keeping their communities and populations safe.
She said Nigeria had witnessed some outbreaks during which these leaders had taken the front row in ensuring that members of their communities were immunized.
The USCDC director added that the leaders had gone as far as creating and delivering advocacy messages to mothers, care givers and community members who, in turn, came out en-masse to have their children, friends and family members vaccinated.
Boyd said: “There have been many outbreaks and there are so many things we know our traditional leaders can help us do this time (COVID-19 pandemic); these include advocacy on hand-washing and keeping the environment clean.
“If we encourage our mothers and caregivers to bring their children for immunisation, this will help us reduce the number of mortalities across our communities,” she said.
The immunisation expert also said that the traditional leaders had always made a difference, adding, “we have data that show the kind of influence the traditional leaders have; the kind of influence we desire to keep everyone safe”.
She disclosed that Nigeria had one of the highest numbers of children with CVDPV2 and also the highest number of unimmunized children globally.
Boyd, therefore, urged the traditional leaders to prevail on their subjects to bring out their children for routine immunizations, adding that they have been successful in getting Nigeria out of wild poliovirus, so, they could help to break the transmission.
While fielding questions from newsmen on the nature of the poliovirus, the executive director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said: “There is a clear distinction from the wild poliovirus that has been eradicated in Nigeria and the whole Africa continent from the current outbreak of different types of poliovirus.
“This is a virus that exists where there is low routine immunization care, where women don’t take their kids for immunization shots against polio, measles and yellow fever, like our parents back then used to do.
“Where there is no full routine immunization and where there is poor water and sanitation then you begin to see the virus mutating; just as you see COVID-19 mutating the same thing applies to poliovirus.
“We would be able to mount outbreak responses to make sure that the tools that we are using will ensure that this outbreak stood.
”We are in control of the situation, hopefully, before the end of the rainy season, we will be able to carry out enough campaigns to make sure we are able to cover this”, he said.
Shuaib added: “One other thing that is going to help us is that we don’t see this attack again due to the increase in immunization coverage.
”Since 2016, when we recorded 33 percent of routine immunization, it has now increased to about 71 percent and double the routine immunization coverage, we still have to get to about 90 percent before we stop seeing these outbreaks of these diseases.
“We are not there yet, but the unprecedented increase in routine immunization coverage is going to help us. One thing that is clear is that globally there has never been such an increase in routine immunization coverage like we are seeing in Nigeria.
“We will continue to work with traditional rulers, they have been very instrumental in convincing their subjects to take their children for routine immunizations.
“The meeting is in how we can focus on different diseases and their root causes. We cannot chase every disease like cholera, CVDPV2, Yellow fever, we have to look at the bottom line, this is because people don’t have good water and are not observing environmental sanitation.
“The traditional rulers are working on how they could increase the knowledge of their subjects and how they can understand the link between poor water availability and poor environmental sanitation and the need to clean their environments”, Shuaib explained.
UNICEF had disclosed that 120 children have so far been infected in 2021 with environmental polio, while saying that Nigeria accounted for 70 percent of polio cases across the continent.
The agency added that Nigeria had a very good immunization infrastructure and was certain that the country would come out of the outbreak of environmental polio in no time.
It, however, stated that the outbreak was across the country and the government of Nigeria and their partners had responded exceptionally well.
According to the agency, 78 million vaccines had already been utilized throughout Nigeria and an additional 50 million were expected in the next few months to counter the outbreak.
