About 9,000 children in Katsina State have missed the anti-polio vaccination exercise in the state due to ignorance displayed by their parents. The head of Katsina office of the United Nations Children Education Fund, Padmavathi Yedia, disclosed this during the traditional leaders/volunteer community mobilisers convention award ceremony.
Yedia called on the state government and other stakeholders to ensure that the children got vaccinated on time to avoid any fresh outbreak of the killer disease.
According to her, “There is the need to work together to reach out to these children who missed the vaccination exercise to get them vaccinated early.”
The UNICEF boss commended traditional rulers and political leaders across Nigeria for their efforts towards making the country polio-free. Earlier, the state Commissioner for Health, Hajia Mari’atu Bala-Usman, said that the state had not recorded any case of polio in the past four years.
“We have reduced the number of unvaccinated children in the state and noncompliant households. The number of children receiving various vaccinations has massively improved,” she said.
Usman said 60 district heads from Katsina and Daura emirate councils and 2,000 VCMs, would be given awards for their outstanding performance towards the eradication of polio in the state.
