Tunbosun Ogundare – Lagos
The Lagos State government has marked out nine local government areas for isolation and vaccination purposes as an effective response to prevent the spread of diphtheria disease among children in the State.
The state immunisation coordinator, Ministry of Health, Dr Olubunmi Akinlade made this disclosure on Friday at a media dialogue and advocacy to promote the uptake of immunization and nutrition among children, particularly under two years and the COVID-19 vaccination update in Lagos.
The two-day media workshop was put together by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in conjunction with the National Orientation Agency(NOA) Lagos.
The vaccination coordinator, who is one of the resource persons at the roundtable and spoke on the COVID-19 vaccination update in Lagos, said it was only five confirmed cases of Diphtheria in three out of the nine isolated LGAs, namely: Mushin, Somolu and Ojo that were recorded so far in the State.
He listed the other six isolated LGAs for pentavalent vaccination to include Agege, Ikorodu, Amuwo-Odofin and SuruLere, among others.
She said the essence of marking out also the six LGAs in addition to the first three for the special vaccination exercise is because of their vulnerability so as not to give room for the spread of the disease beyond the five confirmed cases as prevention, according to her, is not only better but also cheaper than cure particularly when a large number of people are involved.
Diphtheria, according to health experts, is a bacterial infection caused by the bacterium species and can result to fever, runny nose, sore throat, whooping cough, red eyes, neck swelling, and difficulty in breathing.
Akinlade, however, explained that the five children who were down with the disease and had been treated were likely to have been born during the COVID-19 lockdown and their mothers did not present them at health facilities for the pentavalent vaccine.
“So, we don’t want to take chances as a government, reason for the isolation of the nine LGSs to prevent the spread of the disease,” she stressed.
On the COVID-19 vaccination update in the State, Mrs Akinlade said even though Lagos State is still the epic centre of the disease in the country, only about 27 percent of the eight million people expected for vaccination in the state have been vaccinated so far.
She said so many people still don’t see reason they should get vaccinated despite the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine, according to her, is not only safe but also saves lives.
She said the state government target is to get 69,000 people vaccinated each day and to round up the exercise based on the eight million total targets by May but that the high resistance of people to vaccination is greatly slowing down the exercise.
She, however, disclosed that many primary health centres and about 450 mobile outlets in addition spread across the state are designated for people to access vaccination either for the first dose, second, or third doses or booster.
In her own presentation, UNICEF social behaviourial change specialist, Aderonke Akinola-Akinwole stressed the importance of people, particularly the parents taking the issue of their children’s first 1,000 days of life starting with 270 days in the womb to their second birthday very seriously.
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