By Nsa Gill, Calabar
In line with Federal Government intervention to eradicate polio in Nigeria, the Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency and its partners is targeting the vaccination of 900,000 children during the Inactivated Polio virus Vaccines (IPV-2) exercise within one week.
The target also includes 300,000 pregnant mothers making it a total of 1.2million within the state.
The Wife of the Cross River State Governor, Dr. Linda Ayade who flagged off the Maternal Newborn and Child Health Care week in Calabar South, on Thursday noted that Nigeria is rid of wild Polio having had more than half of global cases less than 10years ago but in all of that, Cross River State did not record any case of Polio.
Ayade noted that the flag off exercises which took place in Bogobiri (Hausa/Fulani community in Cross River State) was to felicitate with Muslim faithful in marking Sallah celebration and to sensitize people of that community on how important it is to receive medical care specially during pregnancy and childbirth period.
She appealed to fathers to release their wives to receive the free medical care and encouraged the women especially the ones with children under the age of five to take this exercise very serious by taking their children to vaccination post near them.
“I lend my voice to say that this exercise is very important and I want to plead with the fathers to permit their wives in those nine months of pregnancy to go and receive the medical care that they need, so that the baby will be born healthy. A healthy nation is born out of healthy children.”
Subsequently, the Commissioner for Health, Dr Betta Edu revealed that over 900,000 children and over 300,000 mothers will be reached during this one week exercise because health worker will be dispatched to take those services down to the doorsteps of everyone both in urban and rural areas in Cross River State.
According to the health Commissioner, “This exercise is vast, it has comprises the immunization, the deworming, the malaria intervention where we will be giving out free birth nets, malnutrition screening where we will be screening every child that is malnourished and then provide such child with multi nutrients. To achieve these, we’ve been engaging the Christian Association, Muslim Association and all the tribes and communities in Cross River State just to ensure that we meet our target. Indeed, His Excellency, Prof Ben Ayade is committed to seeing that Cross River State remains a safe haven for mothers and children.” Nation
