‘Community response to immunisation very frustrating’

Mohammed Mohiuddin is the Chief of Field Office, UNICEF, Sokoto. In this interview, he speaks on the problems affecting routine immunisation and efforts to address them. The immunisation rate in Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara states are said to be very low, what are the main challenges and your efforts towards ensuring routine immunisation in the […]

Mohammed Mohiuddin is the Chief of Field Office, UNICEF, Sokoto. In this interview, he speaks on the problems affecting routine immunisation and efforts to address them.

The immunisation rate in Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara states are said to be very low, what are the main challenges and your efforts towards ensuring routine immunisation in the states?

Well, from what I see now, the main challenge is the community engagement. My observation is that government and UNICEF, and other development partners are trying their best; they are making all the commitments and efforts.

The Sokoto State government from the very beginning released all the counterpart funds. The governor declared a state of emergency on education. He appointed a special adviser to look after immunisation and so on. The governor is doing his best along with his team to make a change but the problem is that the community response is very, very frustrating, and not encouraging.

UNICEF and other partners provide vaccines, it is free of charge. The health workers are there, they are sitting there to vaccinate the children, but if the children are not taken for vaccination, what will they do?

Why do  you think the situation is so?

Some parents and guardians are not serious. They are ignorant. Also there are some misconceptions and religious taboos. Some say these vaccines are made from the fat of pork which is completely wrong.

We engage the communities through our networks like Voluntary Community Mobilisation Network for My Polio Programme and  Community Volunteers for My Nutrition Programme. I have the school based management committees in the school and centre based management community in the integrated qur’anic school, and the water and sanitation network for WASH Programme.

 These were the networks we were working with, we did get some results but it was not satisfactory. Now we want to do more because until and unless we make this as a social revolution, it would continue. We can’t accept this four percent immunisation rate against the Nigerian average of 35 percent immunisation rate.

Nowhere in the world is there four percent immunisation rate. Children eligible for vaccines which is free, provided by the government and children are not taking the vaccines, and these six vaccines can save the lives of children from the six killer diseases.

That is why we are now trying to mobilise the community. What we did is to set up a High-Level Advocacy and Community Engagement forum in all the three states, Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara.

 In Sokoto, it is headed by the Deputy Governor  and the commissioners for Education, Health, Information, Religious Affairs, Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs are members. Heads of agencies, traditional institutions, and religious groups are also members.

What is your next line of action?

Basically, now we are waiting for a three-day workshop which would be held in Sokoto inviting all the people from these sectors and we have intention to make a five-year plan starting from 2018, it’s called Community Engagement Plan.

For these  whole initiative, there are three partners we have identified-the media, traditional and religious institutions.

To address the religious misconception, we organised a workshop last year. We invited scholars from both Muslim and Christian faith. We gave them some documents from Egypt, Kenya and other countries. 

They came with all the proofs they wanted, now the documents are finalised, we call it Faith- for -Life document. Formally the two documents would be endorsed by His Eminence , the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar and representative of the Christian Association of Nigeria in that workshop.

It is a multi- sectoral workshop, experts from different sectors would be there to discuss what we need to do on health, specifically on immunisation activities that need to be done over the five years to improve immunisations, same thing  for  maternal health ,breastfeeding, same for water and sanitation, and education. Once these documents are finalised, we would start implementation.

For media, we have the Media Partnership.

How much impact do you think this will make?

I think once we implement these activities, it would make a huge change in the communities. Basically, we need to make the traditional institution accountable,  it is a powerful institution that is well  respected by the people. We want them to take the lead in community mobilisation. We would support them in every way. They have the set up, they have the manpower. We need to activate their networks.

They can make the change but they need the support, they were not given the support required to make the huge change so we would support them in every way.

Already, we have started this in Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State.

I met with the district heads of the two selected areas and I told them the same message-‘You know how many children are eligible to take the vaccination, how many of them are taking and how many are not taking and why they are not taking. Can you take accountability and make them to take the vaccine; whatever support, financial, technical logistics, statistical data you need, I will give you and they were very happy.’

We started it six months ago, it is a tremendous change, all the progress are more than 100 percent when we started the baseline and now.