NPHCDA STRATEGIZES TO ADDRESS POOR COVID-19 VACCINATION RATE IN SOUTH EAST

REPORTER: CHUKWUBUIKE MADU

Enugu State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Cecilia Ezeilo, has challenged relevant health personnel involved in the COVID-19 vaccination in the South East zone to double their efforts in ensuring that the exercise is taken to the grassroots.

This follows worrisome reports by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency that South-East ranks low among geopolitical zones in the country in COVID-19 vaccination.

Health authorities in the South-East and the leadership of the National Primary Health Care Agency (NPHCDA) converged on Enugu to review ways of improving on COVID-19 vaccination in the zone.

Before now, records of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency NPHCDA showed that South-East often ranked first among zone’s carrying out routine immunization in Nigeria.

But the reverse is the case in the on-going COVID-19 mass vaccination.

Presenting an overview of COVID-19 and routine immunization, an official of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Bassey Okpose, said Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States cumulatively vaccinated roughly 6,500 persons daily instead of their average daily target of 7,700 persons.

According to Dr. Okpose, “averagely since it started on a daily basis, we take note of the number of persons that have been vaccinated across the country. We are supposed to reach at least 97,700 persons in the five south east states on a daily basis.

“Abia for instance, currently from the data we have, we are vaccinating 1,438 compared to COVID-19 target of 17,208 persons per day.

“Anambra vaccinated 1,952 as against the vaccination target of 25,848 persons a day. You see we are still far.

“Ebonyi has vaccinated about 618 persons when their daily target is 12,486.

“If you look at Enugu, currently, 1,661 are being vaccinated averagely in a day when the target is supposed to be 18,898.

“And lastly, Imo, they are reaching about 888 when their target is 23, 263.
vaccinated about one thousand persons per day against over seventeen thousands persons expected to be vaccinated in a day.

Visibly worried by this development, Enugu State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Cecilia Ezeilo, who represented Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi at the review meeting, insisted that concerned health personnel must work harder to increase awareness among people the grassroots.

“And I want to use this medium to ask the Executive Secretaries (of SPHCDA) to please interact with the Local Governments, with ndi Igwe (traditional rulers), town union presidents, etc so that this message will go to the roots,” she pleaded.

Mrs. Ezeilo formerly declared the meeting open on behalf of the Enugu State Governor, Chief Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, assuring of constant government support in primary health care and immunization campaigns.

In a related address, the Executive Director National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, commended South East States for taking the lead in the routine immunization but unhappiness with the COVID-19 vaaccination coverage in the area.

He advised state executive secretaries of the agency to carry state Commissioners of Health along in the COVID-19 vaccination processes, insisting that alleged insecurity was not a major barrier to the exercise.

“I want to make it clear to every Executive Secretary here: once resources are pushed to the states for COVID-19 vacccination, for routine immunization, the Commissioner must be aware and if you have not briefed the Commissioner on how it is going to be utilised, then, you are not doing your work well because at the end, the Commissioner for Health is the leader of the health sector.

“Part of the challenge here is the fact that Executive Secretaries are not pulling everybody together. The Executive Secretary does not have the power and the network to pull everybody together.

“So you have to open up and allow everybody to get involved in the vaccination process, so that the Commissioner for Health can also involve other political leaders, religious leaders and traditional leaders.

“I hope at the end of this engagement, there will be clarity, there will be alignment across the health sector on how we go about improving these numbers for we have heard it very well that these numbers are not because of insecurity, they are mostly programmatic,” Dr. Shuaib fumed.

For his part, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare, Senator Chukwuka Utazi, cautioned people of the South East against what he described as misleading anti-COVID-19 vaccination messages and campaigns, especially on the social
Media but urged them to go for mass mobilization of the people.

Senator insisted that the vaccines were safe, pointing out that President Mohammadu Buhari, state governors and himself had taken the jab even to the booster dose.

“I want our people to coordinate and work well; I want our people to take leadership in vaccination.

“We are known to excel. Wise men and women always come from the east and we are easterners. Our wisdom should not be restricted to other things we do but it should also be in health delivery.

“Let us work in sync with the Federal Government and the development partners that have done so much to give us these vaccines at subsidies rate; some free. It is a healthy citizenry that will always guarantee a productive citizenry,” the Senator admonished.

Enugu State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Ikechukwu Obi and the Chairman South-East Commissioners of Health, Dr. Vincent Okpala noted that the integrating of the routine immunization with COVID-19 vaccination had been impactful and gave the hope that the meeting would thinker out ways to over come hesitancy in COVID-19 vaccination in the zone.

There was also a goodwill message from a representative of development partners, Dr. Sidney Sampson, who joined the call for more efforts to expand the rate of the COVID-19 vaccination in the south east zone.

As at the time of filing this report NPHCDA said about 15,110,459 Nigerians had been reached for COVID-19 first dose.

Of this figure, about 5,574,686 persons had received their 2nd dose while 405,540 of them had received the booster dose.