- Sultan of Sokoto highlights Nigeria’s problem lies in implementing solutions, not lacking them, at a meeting on vaccine access
- WHO reveals challenges in delivering healthcare to inaccessible communities due to security concerns, affecting vaccination efforts
Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, Sultan of Sokoto and Chairman of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council (NTRC), has stated that Nigeria is devoid of solutions to the country’s problems but deficient in putting them into action.
The eminent monarch stated that Nigeria’s problem is not a lack of ideas or solutions to its problems, but rather the implementation of the identified solutions.
He made the remarks yesterday in Kaduna at a strategic meeting of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) on how to get vaccines to inaccessible communities in the North West region.
According to the Sultan, a healthy nation is a progressive nation, and no nation can develop if its citizens are not healthy. He did, however, promise that the traditional institution would continue to support childhood immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said at the event that the inaccessibility of communities troubled by security challenges in the North West region has continued to cause setbacks for Nigeria in achieving Universal Health Coverage, claiming that 92% of new cases of Circulating Variant Polio Virus type 2 (cVPV2) recorded between January and August 2023 were from the areas.
This was stated by WHO in Kaduna yesterday during a strategic meeting of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) on how to get vaccines to inaccessible communities in the North West.
The WHO country representative to Nigeria, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, who made the disclosure, stated that the isolation of the circulating variant poliovirus type 2 (cVPV2) has decreased by 63% in Nigeria when 2023 and 2022 were compared.
Mulombo said;
The ongoing inaccessibility to the delivery of PHC services to communities in the North East Nigeria and more recently, North West has continued to bring setbacks to Nigeria in achieving Universal Health Coverage: Especially in the instances where vaccination teams cannot access communities because of the fear of being kidnapped or killed.
Fifty-one cases of cVPV2 have so far been detected between January and 13 August 2023 from 15 LGAs. However, 47 of the 51 cases (92%) are from this axis of North West Nigeria. Majority of the cases are from states with security challenges in the region.
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