Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has stated that Nigeria is not lacking in solutions to the country’s problems but it is deficient in putting them into action.
The eminent monarch made the submission on Wednesday in Kaduna at a strategic meeting of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) on how to get vaccines to inaccessible communities in the North West region.
A healthy nation, the Sultan said, is a progressive nation, and no nation can develop if its citizens are not healthy.
He did, however, promise that the traditional institution would continue to support childhood immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases.
According to the Chairman of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council (NTRC), the meeting was “to discuss with traditional leaders ways to reach out to totally inaccessible and displaced communities of Kaduna, Niger and Katsina states to ensure that every child in the north is immunised because it is one of our duties as traditional leaders.
“We do not lack support from our people, what we lack is implementation and that is why the north is lagging behind in immunization.”
READ ALSO: Bandits Plotting Attack On Abuja-Kaduna Train — DSS Cautions Passengers
The World Health Organization (WHO) said at the event that the inaccessibility of communities troubled by security challenges in the North West region has continued to cause setbacks for Nigeria in achieving Universal Health Coverage.
It added that 92% of new cases of Circulating Variant Polio Virus type 2 (cVPV2) recorded between January and August 2023 were from the areas.
Walter Kazadi Mulombo, the WHO country representative to Nigeria, who made the disclosure, stated that the isolation of the circulating variant poliovirus type 2 (cVPV2) has decreased by 63% in Nigeria when 2023 and 2022 were compared.
Mulombo said: “The ongoing inaccessibility to the delivery of PHC services to communities in the North East Nigeria and more recently, North West has continued to bring setbacks to Nigeria in achieving Universal Health Coverage: Especially in the instances where vaccination teams cannot access communities because of the fear of being kidnapped or killed.
“Fifty-one cases of cVPV2 have so far been detected between January and 13 August 2023 from 15 LGAs. However, 47 of the 51 cases (92%) are from this axis of North West Nigeria. Majority of the cases are from states with security challenges in the region.”
