Rakiya A.Muhammad
With the global quest to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 through vaccination, overcoming vaccine access barriers and speeding up delivery have remained on the front burner in Nigeria.
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control NCDC’s statistics reveals that as of February 28, this year, the country’s infection toll stood at 254,560 and 3,142 deaths recorded. The vaccination figures show that 17,914,944 people had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 8,197,832 have had their second dose.
Recall that vaccination began on March 5, 2021. “Nigeria is currently at 6.7percent of vaccine coverage when it comes to COVID-19, but it is taking steps to accelerate that delivery,” notes Mr. Ted Chaiban, an Inter-agency Global Lead Coordinator for Covid-19 Vaccine Country Readiness and Delivery in Nigeria.
“In 2021, the supply of COVID -19 vaccine was limited, but the situation is improving, and the concern is moving towards the issues of delivery and getting vaccines into the hands of the people.”
The inter-agency’s mission as COVID-19 vaccine delivery partners in Nigeria is to support Nigeria for the acceleration. Chaiban underscores the need for Nigeria to boost vaccine delivery by multiplying efforts.
He says the steps agreed upon include:
• A state-by-state plan.
• Increasing the number of vaccination teams.
• Using community volunteers to mobilize the population.
• Speeding up delivery.
• Investing in the cold chain.
“We want to do the COVID-9 vaccination as quickly as possible because COVID-19 is a serious and deadly disease. It has profound health consequences on people around the world.”
The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, NPHCD, recently launched the optimized Service delivery, Communication, Accountability, Logistics, Electronic reporting, and Supportive supervision (SCALES) strategy for COVID-19 mass vaccination in Nigeria.
The SCALES strategy aims to ramp up vaccine coverage by expanding access to COVID-19 VACCINES outside the health facilities. They have established mass vaccinations sites in all places, such as markets, parks, shopping malls, schools, mosques and churches.
WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, applauded Nigeria’s efforts to leverage capacities on the COVID-19 delivery and reach every eligible Nigeria with COVID-19 vaccines.
“I am happy to understand that this deliberate attempt will bring onboard additional capacities, partners strongly with other actors, the civil society organization, the private sector to optimize every capacity,” he states.
“Very much engaging communities, ensuring that people understand and trust in the process that is going on.” United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Assistant Administrator for Global Health, Dr Atul Gawande, also notes the Nigerian government’s commitment to increasing the uptake of COVID-19 vaccine.
“Given the progress Nigeria has made, and the potential to make significant additional advancement, we are pleased to surge more resources to help rapidly increase vaccination rate.”
He says the US government aims to increase the COVID-19 vaccination rate in Nigeria with the Global Vaccine Access Initiative (Global Vax).
The initiative augments the US government’s international vaccine support in Nigeria. As part of the Global VAX, USAID plans to provide an additional $33.3million in Nigeria to support activities that may include bolstering cold chain supply and logistics, addressing vaccine confidence and demand and increasing the accessibility of vaccination sites, a US Embassy statement reveals.
According to the statement, the US is the largest donor to COVAX and has supplied over 21.7 million vaccine doses to Nigeria and technical and logistic support.
“Since 2020, the United States has provided $143million to support Nigeria’s COVID-19 response. Global VAX also would support Nigeria’s exiting vaccination plans and will help get vaccines to people quickly, safely and equitably, “it adds.
“This is part of the announcement made in December 2021 that the US government would provide an additional $315million for Global VAX, bringing the total US commitment to vaccine readiness and delivery to more than $1.7 billion.”
The federal government expresses readiness to vaccinate a majority of the nation’s population before the end of this year. “Nigeria has invested in vaccines that can cover over 70 per cent of our population before the end of 2022,” chair, Presidential steering
committee on COVID-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha.
He encourages all eligible people to get vaccinated. “These vaccines are safe and efficacious; it is better and safer to be vaccinated against this virus now.”
