The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has cautioned executive secretaries of the state Primary Health Care Development Agencies in the Southeast to stop sidelining the ministries of health in the five states in activities that concern COVID-19 vaccination and childhood immunisation.
Its Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, gave the warning during the Southeast Zone primary health care and COVID-19 vaccination review meeting in Enugu.
Shuaib lamented that the Southeast Zone was curiously lagging behind in COVID-19 vaccination despite doing exceptionally well in routine immunisation, otherwise known as childhood vaccination.
According to him, Southeast was projected to vaccinate about 100, 000 persons per day, but had an abysmal turnout of about 6,000 vaccinated persons per day.
He said apart from the disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccination in the region, the infighting between the executive secretaries of state Primary Health Care Development Agencies in Southeast and their health commissioners over the disbursement of funds sent from the NPHCDA was causing major setback for the programme.
“Executive secretaries must work with commissioners to improve COVID-19 vaccination and routine immunization. The infighting between commissioners and executive secretaries is not helping the programme,” he said.
Shuaib urged the people of Southeast to rise up and show leadership in COVID-19 vaccination like they had always done in such issues like childhood immunisation and other preventable vaccinations.
He said: “Southeast is one of the zones that does exceptionally well when it comes to routine immunisation, which we also call childhood vaccination. But it’s not the case with COVID-19 vaccination. We understand that Igbo people are literate enough to understand that vaccination is protective.
“But we also know that because of the permeation of the social media, especially in the Southeast where there’s a high rate of literacy, people look at the information going on in the social media and get distracted.
“That is why we want to debunk all of this misinformation in Southeast so that people will have the correct information about what COVID-19 vaccination is all about. “We want people to join us tomorrow and ask their questions. Today, however, we want to look at the barriers to the vaccination.
“Vaccine hesitancy is a global problem. Even in Nigeria, we had to borrow from some of the measures that have been used while contextualising these methods to address vaccine hesitancy.
“We know, like we had in the polio eradication programme that there was a lot of misconceptions and misinformation about even polio vaccine. But eventually, while we worked together, we were able to eradicate polio viruses in August of 2020.
“By the same token, I feel pretty confident that one of the outcomes of this meeting today, will be an opportunity to align behind the strategies that will help us to overcome vaccine hesitancy in the Southeast.
“I also feel confident when I look around Southeast, I see public health expert, who are passionate about public health. I see people who have spent so many years doing the right things. I see people who are leaders not only in the health sector, but in all ramifications of the society.”
Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, who was represented by his deputy, Mrs. Cecelia Ezeilo, expressed optimism that with the ongoing review programme, Southeast would improve in Covid-19 vaccination.
The governor urged the PHCDA executive secretaries in the Southeast to take the message to traditional rulers so as to educate their subjects to come out for vaccination.
The governor admitted that the recent statistics of daily and total aggregate COVID-19 vaccinated figures from the zone remained low compared with other zones in the country.
“We are assuring the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), after this review meeting, that we are going to work harder as a zone to up-scale our efforts.
“We will adopt the appeal of Sen. Chukwuka Utazi, on the need for our people to renew their vigour for COVID-19 mass vaccination intake in the South-East,” he said.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Primary Health care and Communicable Diseases, Senator Chukwuka Utazi, urged the people of Southeast to brace and ask themselves questions about the vaccination.
Utazi, who is the Senate Committee Chairman for Primary Health Care, said the meeting was important to the South-East to resolve issues of hesitancy, low awareness and outright rejection of the ongoing COVID-19 mass vaccination.
Utazi, who spoke in Igbo language, urged residents of the South-East to have a re-think on their acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination, adding that they should jettison all forms of unfound rumours about the vaccination.
“We must have a re-think and speed up the COVID-19 vaccination rate; our people are highly educated and knowledgeable on global issues, especially the positive benefits of the COVID-19 mass vaccination.
“We are business people in the zone and we need to be healthy to do our businesses well, which brings us to the need to ensure that COVID-19 pandemic is dealt with in the zone,” he said.
