Rakiya A.Muhammad
Health facility-level Routine Immunisation Strengthening Programs have been urged to enhance their efforts to provide quality routine immunisation (RI) services to address the zero-dose issues in Sokoto State.
Nasiru Abubakar, the Chairman of the Community of Practice (CoP) and Program Manager of the State Emergency Routine Immunisation Coordination Centre (SERICC), made the call in Sokoto.
He was speaking when the State CoP, the African Health Budget Network (AHBN) State Focal Person, and the Zero Dose African Field Epidemiological Network (AFENET) Monitoring and Evaluation visited health facilities in the Tambuwal Local Government Area to evaluate the utilisation, accountability, and sustainability of immunisation finances.
They noted that basic health care and impact projects in the facilities they visited lacked a dedicated budget line for RI.
Among other challenges they observed include suboptimal community involvement in RI planning and implementation, and inadequate staff to support RI service providers.
Others include insufficient vaccine carriers to store vaccines in the labour room, stockouts of vaccine utilisation forms, suboptimal integration of RI with other Primary Health Care (PHC) services, and data disparities in routine immunisation registers, tally sheets, and immunisation summaries.
They underscored the need to create a budget line for RI activities, ensure vaccine utilisation forms are used at health facilities for proper data accountability and availability, and enhance community participation in routine immunisation activities.
Other recommendations include providing a vaccine carrier to improve vaccination in the labour and delivery room, assigning one midwife to support routine immunisation activities, and enhancing the integration of RI with other PHC services.
