Pate, Lamido pledge to tackle polio
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the alarm over the deteriorating health indices in Nigeria and expressed the need for urgent efforts by the relevant authorities to reverse the trend.
Meanwhile, Minister of Health (State) Dr Muhammad Ali Pate and Governor Sule Lamido of Jigawa State have reiterated their commitment towards total eradication of polio from Nigeria at all cost.
Also, plans have been concluded at the state and council levels to meet the target of immunising over one million children against the Wild Polio Virus 1-3 (WPV) type; and below the age of five, by December this year, according to the Borno State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Salma-Anas Kolo.
In a speech at the flag-off of the 2012 Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCHW) in Kubwa, Abuja at the weekend, WHO, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) State Coordinator, Dr Idang Ebong expressed concern, stating that the current health indices for the nation was "not encouraging.
"Access to health care especially in the rural areas is low. Infant and maternal mortalities are unacceptably high, just as life expectancy is low. There is an urgent need for a determined effort to reverse the trend," she stressed.
Ebong however commended what she described as "high impact intervention effort" by the FCT administration particularly in the areas of ante-natal care for pregnant women, routine immunization, health education, HIV counseling and testing, vitamin A supplementation, administration of de-worming tablets to children among others at designated health facilities in all the Area Councils of the territory.
She further expressed the need for an effective monitoring of the MNCHW programme in Abuja through supportive supervision by State/Area Council EPI/PEI Teams and other relevant partners to ensure that it's objectives are fully realized.
In a keynote address at the occasion, FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed, represented by the FCT Minister of State, Olajumoke Akinjide explained that since children were the hope for tomorrow, it was against this backdrop that the FCT administration was focussing on issues of maternal and child welfare programmes as a policy trust.
Pate who spoke at the weekend when he paid a courtesy call on Lamido in Dutse voiced concern over the discrepancies in the performance of those that administer the vaccines at the local level.
"In some areas there are excellent report but in other areas you see that the children are being missed round after round of the immunization effort.
For his part, Lamido said the re-occurring incidence of the virus was the collective shame of Nigeria for which concerted effort must be made to overcome no matter the cost.
