The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says Nigeria is the second country in the world with the highest number of unvaccinated children after India’s 2.7 million.
Chief of Health for UNICEF Nigeria, Eduardo Celades, who stated this at a media briefing on the State of the World’s Children (SOWC) report at the UN House, Abuja said in just three years, the world has lost more than a decade of progress in immunization.
Celades listed weak health systems, which included insufficient number of nurses, doctors and midwives, and COVID-19 pandemic as responsible for the high number of zero dose children.
The UNICEF Nigeria, Chief of Health, said the fund has worked to increase child survival by combating the lagging immunization rates among children in Nigeria.
“With the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, GAVI, the World Health Organization, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we developed a zero-dose strategy to reach children in the 100 most deprived local government areas in 18 states, laying the foundation for targeted intervention. Strengthening the health care system, expanding access to underserved populations, and focusing on primary health care – including newborn, child, adolescent, maternal and reproductive health – were key to reaching children and their families,” he said.
He added that “Our objective is that in the next two years, more or less in 700 days, to reduce the number of zero dose children by 30 percent, we believe we can achieve or even surpass the target of reducing to half this 2.2 million children. We are so proud that last year despite COVID, we saw a lot of progress when we looked at the routine data. We were able to increase by almost seven per cent the number of children vaccinated. So, I believe that if we put together resources with clearer zero doses strategy in mind, working together with NPHCDA, government and partners, we can achieve the target that in 700 days we can vaccinate almost one million children.”
Celades said Nigeria was facing a human resources crisis and that the standard of doctors and nurses were below international standard.
