Polio vaccine acceptance has witnessed a surge in Hotoro North community of Nassarawa local government area of Kano State following renewed efforts by the state government in collaboration with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and key community officials.
The campaign comes on the heels of a disturbing resurgence of circulating variant polioviruses in three local government areas, Warawa, Bunkure and Nassarawa, where three new cases were detected earlier in 2025.
However, a recent visit to the community by a team of journalists who covered the latest round of the National Immunisation Plus Days (NIPDS) campaign revealed a striking turnaround in public response with officials reporting a sharp decline in cases of parental resistance.
Field reports indicated that growing awareness efforts, powered by religious and traditional institutions, are yielding impressive results.
A Ward Development Committee (WDC) member and member of the local polio taskforce confirmed that community resistance has significantly dropped. He recounted that on the third day of the campaign, health teams encountered only four resistant households but after intervention by community leaders, three of the families willingly presented their children for vaccination.
He attributed the success to the continued sensitisation and involvement of respected community figures, where parents are seeing the importance of immunisation and allowing their children to be vaccinated.
In his remarks, the village head representative (Wakilin Hotoro North), Umar Ahmad, said they have been involved in making announcements and engaging community members on the relevance of the exercise.
“We also work together with the Voluntary Community Mobilisers (VCMs) and their supervisors and whenever they have an issue of non-compliance, they call us and we go and talk with such people and by the grace of God, many of them now accept and are co-operating.”
The assistant ward vocal person of the area, Hauwa Ibrahim, described the exercise as successful. “Some of the people in the community are now the ones who would approach us to say that we have not vaccinated their children,” she stated.
While commending the effort of various stakeholders, she noted that progressive evidence has been seen in all the marked houses and records of children reached in the area, with very little cases of non-compliance.
