By Obiabin Onukwugha
The Rivers State government has commenced routine vaccination for children between 0-59 months old under its Big Catch-up immunization campaign in the State.
The vaccination, which commenced on Thursday, February 27, is being carried out in partnership with international humanitarian bodies, including the World Health Organisation, WHO, United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, Corona and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
Speaking earlier during a courtesy visit to the state Commissioner for Information, Dr. Joe Johnson, the Director of Community Health Services of the Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board, Dr. Joy Wihioka, said the international bodies would donate vaccines and support the board with training of the health workers, as well as supervise the field workers.
According to the Director, the vaccine campaign targets 11 local government areas of the state that has deficit of immunization of children within the 0-59-month bracket.
She said focused the are LGAs are Andoni, Abua/Odual, Degema Ahoada West, Asari-Toru, Port Harcourt City, Akuku-Toru, Bonny, Etche , Emohua and Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni.
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Wihioka also disclosed that during the campaign, the RSPHCMB will be vaccinating young girls against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), adding that the vaccines are free of charge.
“We have different campaign strategies for different reasons and this is one of them. We are focusing on 11 LGA’s, reason being that those LGA’s have a higher number of under-immunized children and some children with zero-dose vaccination,” she said.
“Our health workers will be going from house to house and they will be visiting churches, schools, special centres as well as markets, community playgrounds and anywhere we have children of the age, we’ll be giving them the vaccinations.
“We want our communities and our populations to be aware of these services that are going on and access to services and take up the opportunity to vaccinate our children because we don’t want our children to be under-immunized or un-immunized. That is what we are focusing on,” Wihioka stated.
She, therefore, appealed to the communities and residents to take advantage of this government initiative.
In his response, the Commissioner for Information and Communications, Joe Johnson assured the Board of the ministry’s support in effective information dissemination.
The Commissioner also expressed confidence on the Community Health Services of the RSPHCMB in effectively executing the programme which will run side by side with the routine vaccination programme across the other 12 Local Government Areas that are up to date with vaccination programme.
