Enugu State has said that it was targeting over one million children to be immunized within the one week of world immunization celebration.
Chinyere Chime, Enugu State Immunization officer, disclosed this to journalists while explaining the state government’s plan to ensure that the target for the one week immunization was achieved.
She said: “With the strategy we have on ground now we will do a very good intervention because the government and partners like UNICEF are seriously helping to ensure we get to all the hard-to-go areas within the state; we are targeting over one million children.
She also said that although there were some challenges such as Vaccine hesitency, where some people are rejecting some antigens because of their poor understanding or buy in into the benefits of the vaccine, she pointed out that there are areas that are not easily accessible and that it affects the immunization process.
“For a mother to pass a difficult challenge to take her child to health centre where they can be immunized poses a seroous problem in some areas.”
She thanked the Enugu State government and the leadership of the state Primary Health Care Agency for their support in ensuring that immunization activities are seamlessly carried out in all parts of the state.
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Chime further commended UNICEF for its interventions in the state which she described as enormous in the sense that they support in many aspects, in terms of social mobilization, support sensitization of communities by stakeholders
UNICEF, she said, also supports with the provision of security personnel when they are conducting big intervention that they would want to reach every ward and settlement.
“UNICEF supports the security personnel that escort the supervision team to the field and again also in the vaccine security, ensuring that the vaccines sent to Enugu State is kept in a potent stage till they get to the last user.
“UNICEF also provides technical support in the management of the system where they will always provide professional idea on how to make things work. It is enormous; they have been very supportive to our immunization success stories.”
