The administration will do so by working with state governments to address concerns around the financing of Nigeria’s primary healthcare system.
The Federal Government is “committed to eradicating variant poliovirus by the end of the year ensuring that every Nigerian child is covered in the routine immunisation campaigns,” Shettima told attendees at a parley with some members of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Aliko Dangote and Bill Gates at the State House Banquet Hall, Abuja.
The State House Director of Information, Office of the Vice President, Olusola Abiola, disclosed this in a statement he signed Thursday titled ‘We are going to address the concerns that surround financing our primary healthcare system – VP Shettima.’
The VP who described polio as one of the major primary healthcare challenges in Nigeria said “The proposal is to provide timely domestic financing for the procurement of vaccines, which couldn’t have come sooner, to boost our industrial capacity to produce vaccines.”
He affirmed that Nigeria’s three-dose pentavalent vaccine coverage has improved from 33 per cent in 2016 to 57 per cent in 2021.
He stated further that “the variant polio virus has declined in Nigeria by 84 per cent from 2021, falling to fewer than 200 cases in 2022.”
Shettima commended those states who have achieved high-category immunisation coverage, which is between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of the target demographic. He added that the number of states has expanded from 12 to 21 states in five years.
The Vice President stressed that “the Federal Government and our respective state governments are going to set in place a transparent process and structure to undo the reality of the country as one with one of the highest proportions of non-immunized infants in the world over the last decade.”
On the issue of the production of vaccines for immunisation of children, he promised that the FG and states are “going to work together to ensure that these vaccines are made available even to zero-dose children, of which ours, at 2 million, are the highest in the world after India.”
Shettima also thanked partners such as Aliko Dangote’s Foundation and the Bill Gates Foundation, whose empathy, he said, “shone through that uncertain period in our history.”
Earlier in his remarks at the interactive session, Mr. Bill Gates revealed that his foundation had recently announced the intention to commit $7bn to Africa in the next four years; to support routine immunisation in Nigeria, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Northern Nigeria.
Also, in his remarks, Aliko Dangote stated that Bill Gates and himself have been partnering with both the Federal and State Governments for several years, supporting the efforts to eradicate polio and improve routine immunisation, nutrition and primary healthcare in the country.
“We genuinely believe that the National Economic Council and the decisions that you will make over the next four years will determine whether Nigeria has sound economic growth, keep its citizens happy and achieves sustainable development goals,” Dangote added.
On their part, the Governors expressed the readiness to further collaborate with the Dangote and Gates Foundation in the coming years.
In separate remarks, the Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Abdulrahman Abdulraaq, and some Governors who spoke at the parley lauded the philanthropic interventions of the Dangote and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations in healthcare, education, agriculture, and human capital development.
