Imported User:
The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) says it will soon introduce a new improved vaccine that will reduce the number of injections administered during routine child immunisation exercise in the country.
The North-East Coordinator of the agency, Dr Usman Adamu, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Bauchi.
Adamu said the vaccine would be introduced in phases, with Adamawa and Bauchi States selected in the North East zone.
The coordinator said training of the personnel that would administer the vaccines in the two states had been conducted.
``This vaccine is seeking to reduce the number of injection a child will have before he is fully vaccinated, before the age of one, instead of about six or seven injections, this one will be only two or three.''
Adamu said the forthcoming immunisation was initially scheduled to take place in May but had to be delayed due to logistic challenges.
He confirmed that the new vaccines had already been deployed to the two states, saying that work would soon begin there.
Speaking on polio immunisation, the coordinator said the second phase of the exercise would soon begin in the three high risk states of the zone.
``We have the next immunisation plus days in view, is going to be implemented in three very high risk states of Bauchi Borno and Yobe; high risk in the sense that they are among the polio must endemic states of the country, specifically northeast and north west and northeast are the carriers of high burden of polio.”
He said the exercise would begin at the end of June and called on all stakeholders to ensure that they benefited from the exercise in order to eradicate polio from the country.
