Dr. Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has disclosed that the agency will implore the use of health personnels in the military to vaccinate people in hard-to-reach, security-compromised areas.
He hinted this at a media briefing on Tuesday prior to the arrival of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines which the Federal Government of Nigeria procured from the AFREXIM Bank through the African Union.
TheFact Nigeria gathered that this was the third shipment of Covid-19 vaccines into the country; subsequent to Astrazeneca vaccines recieved from the COVAX facility and Moderna vaccines recieved from the United States government.
177,600 out of the 29,850,000 doses of
Johnson & Johnson vaccines
procured by the Nigerian government
arrived Abuja, the nation’s capital today.
This brand of vaccine require only a single dose for full protection against the covid-19 virus.
This feature, Dr. Shuaib noted, made it suitable for administering to people in difficult terrain, he said:
“Because it is a one dose effective vaccine, these doses will be focused on those who are in the hard-to-reach areas (riverine areas, desert areas and security-compromised areas) and the elderly.
“This is because they are people who may find it difficult to leave their homes to the health facility for second dose vaccination.
“We have the capacity to store and distribute this vaccine all the way to the point of administration as we have walk in freezers in all 36 States plus FCT.
“The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is stored at temperatures of +20C to +80C which is the temperature in which most of our routine immunization vaccines are stored”, the NPHCDA boss explained.
He further explained that the availability of different vaccine brands did not in any way mean that some categories of people were selected for high quality vaccines while others were targeted for low quality vaccines.
“All COVID-19 vaccines approved by the World Health Organization are safe and can deliver adequate protection against the disease. It is just the same way as you have Paracetamol manufactured by different pharmaceutical companies, but all deliver pain relief,” he said.
