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COVID-19: Setback for child immunisation as risk of vaccine-preventable diseases increases
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COVID-19 has disrupted health services across the world but one major routine health service that had suffered a setback and disruption in Nigeria remains childhood immunisation.
Findings show that many children under the age of 5 are not being immunised as and at when due. Sadly, without sustained routine immunisation, many children risk vaccine-preventable diseases that may lead to uncertain future and dire health prospects. Chioma Obinna writes
The World Health Organisation, WHO, Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, recently identified routine immunisation as playing a vital role in improving child survival, and contributing to halving the death rate of children below 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 20 years.
UNICEF, WHO kick against discrimination of COVID-19 survivors
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By Sola Ogundipe, Chioma Obinna & Gabriel Olawale
Nigerians and the world at large have been urged to stop discrimination against survivors and those afflicted with coronavirus, even as the demand for vaccine passports that is being agitated by some European countries has been described as unnecessary.
This is coming as the World Health Organisation, WHO, has kicked against the demand for vaccine passports or certificates as being agitated by some European countries before entry by travellers from abroad.
In the views of UNICEF Communication for Development Specialist, Elizabeth Onitolo who canvassed against the spreading fake information and rumours about the COVID-19 vaccine, the time has come for Nigerians to embrace COVID-19 vaccination.
Guard against resurgence of polio, vaccinate your children, UNICEF warns
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By Chioma Obinna
The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has urged Nigerians to be on guard against the resurgence of polio in the country by ensuring that their children participate in the country’s routine immunisation. After over three decades, Nigeria precisely on August 25, 2020, declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation, WHO following the struggle to end poliovirus in 1988 championed by global bodies including WHO, UNICEF, and the Rotary Foundation.
Also, the United State Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, and The Gates Foundation spearheaded the campaign through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, GPEI.
By Chioma Obinna
For decades now, vaccination programmes in Nigeria have been making progress.
But the advent of COVID-19 vaccines may be bringing back ugly years of vaccine hesitancy which experts fear may erode gains already made in routine immunisation.
According to experts, vaccine hesitancy is a continuum between vaccine acceptance and refusal.
Eligible Nigerians are either delaying or refusing COVID-19 vaccines, even after the World Health Organisation, WHO, has confirmed the safety and effectiveness against the dreaded virus.
Sunday Vanguard reports that if left unaddressed, vaccine hesitancy will not only threaten COVID-19 response but prevent Nigeria from achieving herd immunity.