BY TUNDE OMOLEHIN, SOKOTO
On a cool morning in August this year, more than a dozen parents gathered in front of a healthcare center, situated at Arkilla, an outskirts of Sokoto metropolis in Wamakko Local Government Area of Sokoto state, waiting to vaccinate their children against polio disease.
The Arkilla Healthcare Center is one of the many facilities designated for polio immunisation exercise and to provide basic health services needed with essential drugs to treat ailments in the state.
Two local town-criers were seen alerting, displaying some hilarious acts and stealing attention of the public
The spectators were mainly parents who had just visited the facility for the first time.
They have been persuaded in previous days by their community leaders to present their unvaccinated children for prompt immunization.
The community have deployed the town-criers and other traditional entertainers on the importance of child immunisation against polio virus among others infant threatening diseases.
“Our personnel on vaccination missed many children during the house-to-house exercise. So, this is another simple but logical strategy evolved to ensure that no child is un-immunised in the routine campaign, and depleted cases of non-compliance in the state,” says Labaran Jibbo, a vaccination specialist.
Asma’u Suleiman, a housewife who had taken her one-year-old child to receive the polio vaccine, the message was persistently conveyed by some town-criers.
“Each morning, I wake up to the sound and hilarious voice of these town-criers. I later took the decision of visiting the healthcare to allow my child to be immunized. With much persuasion, my husband consented.” Asma’u recounts.
The 25-yrs-old housewife was not the only person motivated by the town-criers’ message on the need for polio immunization for children under 5 years old.
Haruna Tangaza, a community leader says the wisdom has attracted many unwilling parents who have refused to present their children for immunisation.
“Not that alone, for every child immunised within this community, there is a reward for it,” says Tangaza, a retired healthcare personnel.
A SURVIVOR’S RESPONSE
Hajiya Zainab Abdulnaseer, a mother of three and currently Assistant Director, News, at the NTA, Sokoto Network Centre, is a survivor of polio in the state.
Over the years, Abdulnaseer has become committed to child immunization against polio and other killer diseases, using personal experience to advocate for all children to be vaccinated against polio in the state.
Account to her account: “I learned from my mother that I walked at seven months and it was around when I was a year old that I had a severe fever and I was given an injection. There on, I was unable to sit but could only crawl. My mother only told me that she took me to hospital for a routine injection.
“My advice to parents is that polio is real and we have to protect our children with the free vaccines. As a survivor, I can say that polio does not end only with disability. There are aged-related pains and trauma that come with it.”
But, Hajiya Zainab’s personal experience has never deterred some parents from shielding their children from the polio vaccines in the state.
THE MISCONCEPTIONS
Field Immunization officials say elites in the rural areas had in many instances rejected the vaccines for their wards, with no or flimsy reasons given to the local vaccinators in their areas.
The underprivileged also shared from the impasse of this non-compliance through their attitudinal behaviors, said Salau Jida, an health worker attached to the facility.
“They mostly declined on the account of their disbelief and poverty reasons.”
“Most of our women believed in and wanted the vaccine for their children but the marital burden placed the final say on the husband.
“This has made so many of them lose interest and now frustrating the exercise, especially in the northern States,” Hajia Jida maintains.
Sources say most of these non-adherents at times confused vaccinators by marking their houses with the code to give the impression that their houses had been visited and their children vaccinated.
RMTimes preliminary findings have shown that most mothers refused the vaccination of their children on the excuse that the vaccines brought to them had expired.
“They would later promise our vaccinators on the excuse that they would rather go to the health facility for the vaccines but wouldn’t do so,” Bello Arkilla, a former immunisation ad-hoc worker said.
USING LOCAL INITIATIVE TO FIGHT GLOBAL PROBLEM
Findings by RMTimes reveal that the initiative has been promoted by the community heads across the state, with support from the State’ Primary Healthcare Development Agency and other partners.
Labaran Jibbo described this as successful, with many children available for the routine vaccination.on appointed schedules.
For years, Nigeria among India and Pakistan have been struggling to be declared polio-free nations having not recorded zero cases of the wild poliovirus.
Until 2020, the World Health Organisation officially certified Nigeria as polio free making the country the last polio-endemic nation in Africa.
The last case of polio in Sokoto State was in 2012 at Lahodu, Wurno Local Government Area, where, Abdullahi Keli, now 10, was identified. Since then, there has not been any reported case.
Abdullahi now a reference point during immunisation campaigns and advocacy particularly in and around Wurno council, a focal area in the state for the fight against polio.
However, the community’s advocacy has remained a boost to polio and other vaccination rates in Sokoto state.
COMMUNICATION, A TOOL FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Adamu Abdullahi Romo, Executive Secretary, Primary Healthcare Development Agency in Sokoto State says the agency used advocacy for both vaccinations and culturally competent information about vaccines available in the places that women and children already frequent.
“That’s a strategy that should define this current, toughest phase of the state’s flagging vaccination campaign. Now that Nigeria has been certified a free polio nation. We need this approach to maintain the statutory law.
“We need to make it so easy to get the shots that people have no excuse for being unvaccinated. The more we remove the accessibility barrier, the more vaccines we will be able to give out.” Romo said.
The Executive Secretary also reiterated the commitment of the ministry of health and beyond the state government to work with the media organizations in providing all the information needed on polio.
“We are now focusing on improving the quality of polio vaccination campaigns in the state – including through the use of Global Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology.
“And to help prevent the spread of the virus across borders, polio vaccine continues to be administered periodically at refugee camps.
Communication experts say, to boost vaccination rates among communities with higher barriers of access to the vaccine, advocates say it’s crucial for vaccination clinics to be organized in culturally relevant places not just once, but many times.
Haruna Shehu, a graduate of Linguistics suggests that both covid-19 and polio vaccines need simple communication in a local language of the people to debunk any rumors and information associated with the misconceptions.
“If you are trying to target indigenous people, you need to speak to them in a way that makes sense for them. It’s necessary to repeatedly stress that vaccines are free.” Shehu said.
