Nigeria, Gavi reaffirms partnership with traditional leaders to foster immunisation

By Edward Samuel, Abuja

On Sep 15, 2023

The Nigeria government and Gavi the Vaccine Alliance have reaffirmed its partnership with the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee, (NTLC) to foster the immunisation of missed children in the northern part of the country.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate who made the disclosure during the visit of the CEO of Gavi to New Karu PHC in Nasarawa state, North central Nigeria said there is a lot of investment that has come from Federal Government, NPHCDA, State government and complemented by the excellent partners like GAVI over the years, and those investments have achieved a very good results.

“It improved reaching children with life saving vaccines, because vaccines work, they’re safe, and they work and they have protected many children from diseases like measles, like polio, diarrheal diseases, pneumonia, but there’s still many children that we miss, and that we need to do more to ensure that we reduce those who are completely missing the zero children”, he said.

Prof. Pate noted that the federal government is committed to work with the state government and the community leaders to ensure that every Nigerian child ultimately gets the benefit of this life saving tools of vaccines, as well as treatment of other diseases.

In his speech, the Director General, National Primary Health Development Agency, (NPHCDA) Dr. Faisal Shuaib said the Esu of Karu is one of the founding leaders of the NTLC on primary health care delivery, that is why they are seeing the kind of progress they have seen with health.

“And in order to demonstrate how well his leadership has help Nasarawa state, Nasarawa state came first when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination, so, David Marlow, in terms of the collaboration of Gavi, (CoVas) with Nigeria, there is no better place where the resources that were deployed during COVID-19 were judiciously use like nasarawa state and they recognized the leadership provided by the Esu Karu”, he said.

Dr. Shuaib who lead the delegation said the efforts for the visit to the Esu palace is to make sure that the traditional institution is weaved into the tapestry of health in the country, and this has continue to shine through over 10 years.

The Chief Executive Officer, Gavi, David Marlow who explained that Nigeria as the largest zero dose children population in the world, with 2.3 million needs future opportunity to prevent deaths in Nigeria and the potential is by 2030 to save 5.6 million people’s lives.

“And that does not even exclude many other potential vaccines such as malaria that we can bring to this country. So our partnership is so important to us and we will do everything that we can to the communities, and to serve the country”.

Marlow said GAVI is here to look after the countries health and the citizen voices therefore matters, and they would continue the strong partnership that they have built over many years, since the year 2002 they have been active in Nigeria.

The Esu Karu HRH Luka Panya in his Palace, said the feet of immunization achievements would not have been possible without the critical contributions of the people through their traditional leaders at all levels. The traditional political sectors of the state have established a mutually beneficial synergy under the auspices of the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee(NTLC) on primary health care delivery.

“The NTLC group that I represent Nasarawa state on which as you know, one traditional leader from all the northern states and the FCT traditional leader support advocacy, community mobilization, role modeling, trust building and demand generation for immunization, especially among populations with high rates of zero those children”, he said.

HRH Panya said Nigeria being one of the highest zero dose immunization status, says it calls for serious concern and commitment from the traditional leaders part.

“This is a very serious challenge and I believe the NTLC in conjunction with the National Prime Minister’s doing something we hope that our traditional leaders, and our dependable partners like Gavi, the vaccine alliance will reciprocate our good intentions by supporting the systemic engagement of traditional religious leaders in the state”, he added.