Dep Gov says Govt will immunise 1.8M children in Sokoto

Sokoto State Government says it is targeting no fewer than 1.8 million children, aged from 0 to 5 years in the ongoing four days polio immunisation in the state.

The State Deputy Governor, Ahaji Ahmed Aliyu, made the disclosure to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sokoto on Sunday.

Aliyu, who is also the Chairman of the State’s Task Force on polio immunisation, said that the exercise, which commenced on Saturday, would end on Tuesday.

He said efforts were on to achive over 100 per cent coverage of the targeted children in all the 23 local government areas of the state.

The deputy governor said that the state government had distributed about 1.83 million doses of Oral Polio Vaccines (OPV) across the state.

Aliyu said that no fewer than 9,429 health personnel were conducting the exercise.

Also, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Alhaji Almustapha Othman, also told NAN that measures had been put in place to ensure the full acceptance of the exercise by parents.

Othman expressed happiness that parents in the state were now wholly accepting the exercise.

In his remarks, the Executive Secretary, State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Sani Labaran, also explained that social mobilisation of all the residents had been intensified.

This, Labaran said, was to shore up the acceptance of the OPV by the parents, adding that it was safe.