National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has integrated childhood vaccination at COVID-19 vaccination sites for children from 0-23 months.
This is to ensure that preventable childhood diseases are not neglected in the face of the response against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Executive Director, NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, stated this at the National COVID-19 vaccines weekly briefing on Tuesday, in Abuja.
According to him, the integration of childhood immunization is part of the Federal Government’s plan to involve childhood immunization in its ongoing COVID-19 campaign train.
“In this phase of COVID-19 mass vaccination, the campaign will be integrated with childhood immunization and other primary health care services.
“What this simply means is that alongside the COVID-19 vaccines, childhood vaccines will also be available at COVID-19 vaccination centers.
“Consequently, parents or guardians with children aged zero to 23 months are urged to take them along to the vaccination sites,” he said.
While calling on Nigerians to utilize the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaign across the country, Dr. Shuaib said the holiday season came with a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases.
He noted that several unvaccinated individuals were migrating from the cities to the rural areas and back to the cities.
“Globally, we saw the emergence of new variants such as IHU variant in France which is said to have 46 mutations, Deltacron in Cyprus and the Omicron variant still being highly infectious with a BA.2 subvariant rapidly spreading.
“More of our citizens were coming down with the infection. Luckily for our vaccinated population, those who came down with the COVID-19 infection had mild symptoms which they managed at home due to the immunity the vaccination provided them.
“If they were not vaccinated, we cannot predict how these cases would have turned out. Vaccination prevents you from severe disease, hospitalization, and death,” he explained.
The Executive Director added that the reason for the emergence of these variants was because there was still a large proportion of the eligible population was yet to be vaccinated.
According to him, this gives the virus time to mutate and fight back.
Meanwhile, the UNICEF Nigeria Representative, Dr. Peter Hawkins disclosed that 298 million dollars had been used by the Nigerian government for the procurement of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in total at about 30 million doses.
Hawkins noted that this was a commitment and the drawdown comes as it becomes available and as it was required.
“Nigeria so far, but the actual figure as received was 51,014,140 doses. There’s 10 million that is being stored ready to come into Nigeria,” he said.
(NAN)