The Kaduna State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA) says it is targeting over 2.8 million children for the second round of polio outbreak response immunisation in the state.
The agency’s Deputy Director, Hamza Ibrahim-Hamza, who spoke on Friday in Kaduna said that the vaccination would run from April 20 to April 23 in the state’s 23 local government areas.
He said that the state hoped to achieve 85 per cent in the exercise, adding “We are commencing the exercise on Saturday and hope to achieve total compliance by the parents and caregivers.
”We want to ensure that children from ages 0-five years are fully immunised.”
Ibrahim-Hamza said that the agency had intensified efforts to involve traditional and religious leaders to track children who are under one year old. He said that at least two health workers would be sent to each of the hard-to-reach areas for proper coverage.
Ibrahim-Hamza appealed to parents, guardians and caregivers to ensure they make their children available for immunisation during the campaign and for routine immunisation in any nearby health centre or hospital.
“The vaccination will include house-to-house and in hospitals and we will supervise 1,168 health facilities so that all the communities will benefit, especially children less than one year,” the official said.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (for example, contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness of the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, 5–10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
Polio mainly affects children under 5 years of age. However, any one of any age who is unvaccinated can contract the disease.
NAN
