FG’s effort to eradicate polio has paid off – Stakeholders

Commending the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Ado Muhammad, over the historic feat recorded by Nigeria in its bid to eradicate polio, the stakeholders opined that the one year interruption of polio is the most important stage in the process of eradicating the disease.Speaking in separate interviews in […]

Commending the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Ado Muhammad, over the historic feat recorded by Nigeria in its bid to eradicate polio, the stakeholders opined that the one year interruption of polio is the most important stage in the process of eradicating the disease.
Speaking in separate interviews in Abuja on the historic feat, two former ministers of health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu and Dr. Khaliru Alhassan, commended the NPHCDA boss for his efforts in eradicating the disease.
 Prof. Chukwu said: “It was during his tenure that we had the use of GPS, where we were able to tag our vaccinators because we found out that sometimes we give our vaccinators vaccines to go and immunize our children, they get somewhere and dump them (the vaccines). When we investigated, we found that there were some areas in Kano where consistently, for one reason or the other, vaccinators never went. So it was during the tenure of Dr. Ado Muhammad that we used this technology to monitor wherever our vaccinators where and that ensured better coverage.”
He added that: “It was also during the tenure of Dr. Ado Muhammed that we established polio emergency operations system. That was a game-changer in the fight against polio because with the emergency operations center for polio here in Abuja, we could stay there and map out where we had cases, where people were not immunized, cases where polio had been seen real-time, so we could respond much better.”
They also commended development partners, donor agencies the Sultan of Sokoto, Emir of Kano, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and the current Governor (then deputy Governor) of Kano State, Dr. Umar Abdullahi Ganduje, for the remarkable roles they played in bringing the disease to an end in Nigeria.
Speaking in a similar vein, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan said, “I have known him long before I became a minister. Right from when I was still at the state level, we had been working together in the area of eradicating polio.”
He added that: “Of course he has been supported by his colleagues, he can’t do it alone. This is a collective success not only for the federal government but down to the local governments and communities. So everybody has done well.”
The federal government and international donor agencies such as the World Bank, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Dangote Foundation, GAVI Alliance, JICA, WHO, Rotary International and UNICEF, etc had collectively spent billions of dollars over the years trying to fight the disease that continued to kill and deform children in Nigeria.