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Polio
Immunization
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Mairo Mandara, Country
Representative of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says eradication of polio in Nigeria will be the
foundation’s greatest achievement.
News
Agency of Nigeria report continues:
Ms.
Mandara, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Sunday in
Abuja, said that Nigeria was one of the three countries left to completely
tackle Poliomyelitis scourge.
She
listed two other countries as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
According
to her, efforts are on to kick polio out of Nigeria this year.
“We
are going to kick polio out, and we are actively vaccinating and doing
surveillance, so eradicating polio in Nigeria will be our biggest achievement.
“Not
only will we not have active polio and children either dying or becoming
crippled from polio, all the money for polio campaign will be available to
invest in vaccination, maternal healthcare and Primary Healthcare.
“So,
with the ending of polio, all other programmes will suddenly be boosted,” Ms.
Mandara said.
She
said that Nigeria had not recorded any polio case for almost two years before
the cases in Maiduguri were discovered, which she said, was not surprising.
The
Gates Foundation chief said that this was because for about four years,
children and their families were enslaved by Boko Haram and could not be
reached by the vaccinators.
She
said that except for Borno, the scourge had not been recorded in any other
parts of the country recently.
MS.
Mandara also said that the foundation was developing a Nigeria Country
Strategy, a plan which was in line with what the Federal Government was doing.
She
said it was developing a working methodology that supports the agenda of the
government and people of Nigeria to improve health of women and children and
its revitalization of one Primary Healthcare Centre, PHC, per ward initiative.
Ms.
Mandara said that the foundation would, through the strategy, also support
Nigeria to ensure that small holder farmers become central to its agricultural
agenda.
“We
want to support the Nigerian Government to develop a workforce of village
health workers that will go to villages and ensure that there is good health
and nutrition education.
“The
government leading and we, with others supporting, so that it will have a
sustained strategy for improving the lives of people in Nigeria,” the Gates
Foundation official said.
She
said that the present economic recession was an opportunity for Nigeria to
reflect on how it does business, adjust its priorities and invest differently.
“In
Nigeria, we are used to having heavy budgets for tertiary health institutions
like teaching hospitals, but because of the recession, and with many people at
the lower ebb of the pyramid, we need to invest in PHCs.
“We
used to wait until we are sick to treat diseases, but now, we have to invest in
prevention of illnesses,” Ms. Mandara said.
She
said the government has yet to do enough to end the scourge of diseases, adding
that the aim was to ensure zero tolerance for any disease.
“I
am not sure there is any government in the world that is doing enough until we
reach the stage of the wonderful number zero.
“At
this stage, no one is dying of any disease and no child is dying of preventable
diseases, zero number of children are not immunized.
“Also,
every woman who wants to space her children has the option of doing so, so
until we get to zero, we cannot say that any government is doing the best.’’
She,
however, commended the political will of the present administration toward
health, adding that the revitalization of 10,000 PHCs introduced by the Federal
Government was the key to Nigeria’s health intervention.
The
country representative said that the government needs to do more to create
human resources for health by properly distributing health workers to fill up
the vacancies in the rural areas.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been supporting humanity’s cause in Nigeria through donations to the government and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for more than 10 years.
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