By Bashir Bello

KANO — Worried by Nigeria’s indices of infant and child mortality as a result of childhood killer diseases, A Non Governmental Organization, known as Care Nigeria, said it has scaled up immunization uptake of over 30,000 children under 5 years against the killer diseases in Bade Local Government area of Yobe State.

The Assistant Country Director for programs, Jennifer Orgle made this known during the dissemination of findings and close out session of the project, Reducing Infectious Diseases among Children Under 5, (RIDCU-5) funded by Pfizer Foundation.

Orgle who cited social norms and practices among the people as a big challenge and a factor mitigating against uptake of immunization, however, said the organization carried out series of awareness creation and that which resulted to increase in immunization uptake in the area.

According to her, “the project was implemented in response to high rate of infant and child mortality in Nigeria. Currently, for under five, according to the 2019 report, we have about 117 children dying out of every 1,000 children born alive. It is one of the highest in the world. And we also realized the children were dieing from preventable diseases such as Malaria, Diarrhea, Measles, Acute Respiratory Diseases.

“One of the biggest challenge we have in most part of Nigeria is social norms and practices. People’s belief around immunization. With things like awareness creation, we realize we increase immunization for children, under five, targeting pregnant women, adolescent girls to make sure they are in good health and give birth to healthy children, adopt best practices and get the children immunized.

“We also work closely with the local government, we strengthen the local government facilities in the areas of building capacity and supplying of equipments needed. We also work with religious and traditional leaders within Bade LGA to ensure that the intervention we were bringing were being integrated into systems that already exists.

“We build capacity of the caregivers themselves to be able to adopt best practices and know when to vaccinate children. To also create surveillance system which monitor what is taking place so that in the health system when they see a rise in any of the diseases they would easily dictate what is happening and intervention to take.

“By doing all these and working with the key stakeholders, we hope that we have built enough resilience, built capacity, create sustainability that even now that the project is ending, the interventions that we have carried out will continue,” Orgle stated.

Earlier, the Chairman of Bade LGA, Ibrahim Babagana said the mortality rate in the LGA has drastically reduced and pregnant women who were enlightened now access healthcare in facilities for Ante-Natal Care, ANC and delivery compare to the past.

He however expressed his readiness to work with the health workers to ensure sustainability of the intervention in the area.

On his part, the Emir of Bade, Alhaji Abubakar Umar Suleiman represented by District Head of Gashua, Bulama Sulaiman commended the organization for the support which he said has gone a long way in strengthening the health care of the Local Government and improve the lives of the people of the area.

The $2 million project funded by Pfizer Foundation was implemented for about two years from October, 2021 to December, 2023.