By Chioma Obinna

With less than seven months for Nigeria to be declared polio free by the World Health Organisation, WHO, the Lagos State government is targeting over four million children for vaccination against polio and other childhood killer diseases as part of efforts to consolidate the progress on polio eradication.

Announcing the commencement of the March 2015 National Immunnisation Plus Days, NIPDs, in Lagos, Special Adviser to the State Governor on Public Health, Dr. Yewande Adeshina, said the campaign holds March 14 through 17, 2015, and is aimed at total eradication of polio and the incidence of all vaccine preventable diseases and attendant morbidity/mortality.

Yewande who noted that since 2009 Lagos has not recorded any case of polio said the NIPDs is specifically targeted at children between the ages of 0 to 5 years at home, markets, churches, mosques major car parks and social event venues and would involve house-to-house, transit and fixed post teams.

“The house-to-house and transit components of these teams will administer only OPV to children aged 0-59 months irrespective of their immunisation status. They will encourage the eligible children in the houses to visit the immunization posts for other antigens. In Lagos, we will mount 752 fixed posts, 2,189 house-to-house and 1,712 transit teams”, she explained.

Adeshina, therefore, appealed to parents and caregivers to take their children and wards to nearby primary health care clinics to receive the trivalent oral polio vaccine, OPV, vaccine and other scheduled immunisation.

For parents with concerns about the vaccine, she assured that it is free, safe and effective and is to be administered to the children irrespective of their previous immunisation status. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only three countries still under the threat of polio.

On the strike threat by doctors in the state, she noted: ‘We don’t support doctors’ strike and we have used every opportunity to establish that at this conventionally, highly educated and intellectual level, dialogue communication is the key. No threat or holding hostages in the way of not treating patients will make government do things that it is not prepared to do by way of imposition.”