Bauchi —New Executive Chairman, Bauchi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, PHCDA, Dr Adamu Gamawa, said, yesterday, that efforts had been intensified to immunise  children of internally displaced persons living in the state against polio virus.

Gamawa told the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, in Bauchi that although he inherited an agency that had worked hard to ensure that the state was free of the wild polio virus, his greatest challenge was the influx of persons from neighbouring states facing security challenges.

He said: ”I met an organisation that is functional and willing to work but the major challenge we have is that of  internally displaced persons from some neighbouring states.

”People are moving and because of the security challenges, you cannot be sure that all their children had been vaccinated against the wild polio virus.”
The chairman stated that as a step towards ensuring that all children were captured, the agency had to be extending Immunisation Plus Days .

He said: ”We had to be staggering immunisation far beyond the Immunisation Plus Days to take care of all those areas that have challenges and difficult terrain.
”We equally have plans for nomadic people that move across the state; we make sure that they are immunised.”