Ogun commissioner urges parents to embrace child immunisation

The Ogun State Commissioner for Health, Dr Tomi Coker, on Monday, emphasised the need for parents and guardians to ensure that their children are well immunised as this helps to aid mental alertness and prevent diseases that could cause brain disorders.

Coker equally urged the residents of the state to fully embrace the HPV vaccination programme starting on Tuesday as this helps to insure the girls against the Human Papilloma Virus causing cervical cancer in women, which is the variant of cancer responsible for the highest number of deaths in women after breast cancer.

The Commissioner for Health disclosed this on Monday while flagging off the Optimized Outreach Strategy campaign for immunisation at
Isewo, Ijebu Imushin in Ijebu East Local Government. The programme was supported with N150m funding by the Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund.

The commissioner used the medium to disabuse the minds of the people against rumours or misconceptions about the immunisation programme, saying that the vaccination is purely to prevent the children against vaccine-preventable diseases such as poliomyelitis, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and tetanus among other illnesses that could also cause mental retardation.

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She said, “It is pertinent our mothers and guardians don’t give in to all the rumours about immunisation because it is all falsehood. Immunisation is good for children because it prevents them from having cerebral illnesses and convulsions and that itself protects the brain because when you have a cerebral illness it tends to damage the cells of the brain and you have people not attaining their intellectual capacity and such people may not be gainfully employed later in life.

“This is one of the contributory factors to the increase in unemployment because when people don’t have the required mental capacity to retain skills, they will be jobless. So I would like to encourage mothers to bring their children out for routine immunisation from the ages of six to 15 months.

“There is another immunisation that we are starting on Tuesday (today). It is the HPV vaccine that prevents our girls from getting cervical cancer which is the variant of cancer that causes the highest number of deaths in women after breast cancer. The vaccine is for girls ages 9 to 14. The vaccine is very safe and it is free.

“We urge our parents, and guardians to please let the girls take it. The vaccine is safe and effective. It has been proven in England and other climes that girls that have been immunised since the year 2000 have not been able to find one single case of any of them having cervical cancer. This has further reassured us that the vaccine is indeed safe and very effective, so we all must support the success of this vaccination programme”.

The Executive Director of Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund, Dr Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko, while speaking at the event, disclosed that the need to improve the immunisation coverage for children in Nigeria informed the partnership with Ogun State, Kwara and Rivers State and that at least 500,000 children would be vaccinated in each of the states during this exercise.

Dr Chinye-Nowoko said, “We have found out that the coverage of immunisation in Nigeria is lower when compared with other countries in Africa. The Africa Union targets 80%  of children vaccinated against all vaccine-preventable diseases, so to further upscale this we have decided to partner with some states lagging and Ogun State is one. We are helping with funding to conduct optimized outreaches to ensure that everyone across each ward of the local government is reached.

“We are committing N150m to this programme and we are also partnering with Kwara and Rivers States. Our coverage target at the end of this exercise is at least 90% and we also plan to ensure that over 500,000 children in each of these three states are vaccinated during this exercise.”