Jigawa State immunises three million against meningitis

MORE than three million people were immunized in the just concluded campaign against cerebrum meningitis (MENAFRIVAC) in Jigawa State, according to the state Director General, Gunduma Primary Healthcare Board, Pharm Usaman Tahir.

Tahir who disclosed this while briefing newsmen at the close of the 10-day exercise, also said the new, improved vaccine injection used in the exercise would give 10-year immunity against the disease to every individual vaccinated.

Tahir noted that those immunized were mostly youth and children from age of seven and below.

Meanwhile, two years after the Mother and Child Hospital, a maternal health support facility was commissioned by the Olusegun Mimiko administration in Ondo State, 18,198 children under the age of five and 14, 553 antenatal patients had been catered for.

The statistics described by the state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Dayo Adeyanju, as very impressive, also included 6,784 normal deliveries, 1,250 caesarian sections and 4,263 child admissions. All the operations of the facility are entirely free.

Encouraged by the success story of the maternal facility which caught the attention of the World Bank into recommending it as a pivot for African governments in their health campaigns, the state government is set to replicate it in all the major towns where new ones are at various stages of completion.

Adeyanju who reeled out the figures at the close of the Festival of Surgeries (FOS) organised by the state government to handle surgically-treatable diseases among the indigent population in Ondo over the weekend, added that the operations of the Mother and Child Hospital have greatly raised the bar of healthcare delivery in the state.

The FOS, an initiative of Mimiko as a Commissioner of Health between 1999 and 2003, is designed to assist the poor who suffer from surgically-treatable diseases but cannot afford the cost of surgeries.

-Nigeria Health News, Jigawa State

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By John Akubo (Dutse) and Niyi Bello (Akure)

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