By Rahila Lassa, Abuja
Nigeria has established a National Covid-19 Operations room.
The Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shu’aib announced this in Abuja, at the National Joint Media briefing by the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19.
He said the Operations Room was established with membership from government and partners.
According to him, the move was in leveraging the experiences of the NPHCDA, from polio eradication.
“The Operations room will track 24/7 planned activities at national, state and LGAs and report on the state of preparedness using a dashboard. This is with a view to identifying gaps and addressing them promptly,” he said.
He noted that the activities from the operation Room entails holding people accountable for their actions or in-actions.
Dr Shu’aib further noted that as the country awaits the arrival of its first 4million doses of vaccines, preparations are already completed for the vaccines to be stored in Walk-in Cold Rooms (WICR) at the National, Zonal and state levels.
” At the LGA level, the vaccines will be stored in vaccine refrigerators and at Health facilities with Solar Direct Drive Cold Chain Equipment. These will also store the vaccines during implementation. Approximately 7,500 political Wards in the country have Solar Direct Drive (SDD) refrigerators to store vaccines even where there is no electricity supply.
“The remaining political wards that do not have these in their facilities are currently been fed by installation agents that have assured us that the process will be completed by the end of this year. With the trend in the rate of installations, we have no reason to doubt their ability to deliver on this task. In the meantime, those Wards without SDDs will be supported from neighboring health facilities,” Dr Shu’aib explained.
Earlier, in continuation with its awareness creation and sensitisation efforts, the response team met with the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, the Full Gospel Businessmen Fellowship, the Nigeria Union of Journalists and Rotary International.
The meeting addressed concerns about Covid-19 vaccine and secured the stakeholders’ commitment to support the Covid-19 vaccination process.
Confidence Okwuchi
