The Director Primary Health Care Jigawa State, Dr. Shehu Sambo has disclosed that the state recorded a 700% increase in immunisation Uptake from 7% in 2016 to 49% in 2024.
Sambo stated this on Tuesday, September 3, 2023 during a Two-day Media Dialogue And Field Trip On
Strengthening Primary Health Care Systems, held in Dutse, the Jigawa State Capital.
He said: “this primary health care development agency in Jigawa State was created in 2016, this coincided with the conduct of a survey then, and only 7% of our eligible children were immunized as at 2016.
“Engagements and robustness of activities that we do in primary health care agency, we were able to have immunisation coverage of 700% increase, that is 7 fold increase of 49%.
“What that means is that more children have been reached and prevented from contracting vaccine preventable diseases and they survive more and their nutritional status would be better, IQ and capacity to learn in school would also improve”.
He explained that the Primary Healthcare Center Strengthening program was funded by Gavi and implemented by UNICEF.
This, he said was a result of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2022 between the Jigawa State Government, the Federal Ministry of Health, the Nigeria Governors Forum, GAVI, and UNICEF to improve routine immunization and primary healthcare systems and reduce loss of life, particularly among women and children.
He noted that the funding from Gavi gave them more funding to be able to engage midwives, train frontline Healthcare workers to be able to deliver the needed services to all the hard to reach areas across Jigawa State.
It also assisted them in organising training for improved data entry and transmission, demand generation, recruitment of health ambassadors known as jakadar lafiya and others.
The Media Dialogue and Field Trip was Organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and The Child
Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the
Federal Ministry of Information.
