Press Release

Nigeria targets 10 million with new immunization strategy

August 7  2006

During an immunization campaign in early July, Nigeria’s National Program on Immunization rolled out a new strategy to halt the transmission of polio in the country.

The new approach, called Immunization Plus Days, involves delivering the oral polio vaccine through a combination of door-to-door and fixed-post immunizations in five days. This would be part of a package that includes vaccines for diphtheria, measles, tetanus, and whooping cough.

Health workers and volunteers also can simultaneously carry out other health campaigns, such as distributing vitamin A pills or mosquito nets to check the spread of malaria. The new strategy was first carried out as a pilot program during vaccination campaigns in May and June.

More than 10 million children in 11 polio-endemic states in northern Nigeria were targeted during the campaign, launched on 29 June. Religious and traditional leaders were involved in the effort during the social mobilization stage, which is a big change. In 2003, several religious and traditional leaders were on the forefront of an oral polio vaccine boycott. Before medical experts managed to persuade suspicious residents that the vaccine was harmless, the boycott led to a polio outbreak that swept across Nigeria. The outbreak eventually reinfected more than a dozen polio-free countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

According to Ade Adefeso, chair of the Nigeria PolioPlus Committee, the new approach is already producing positive results. “The new strategy is working and, if properly applied, it will assist us in reaching every child with oral polio vaccine in accelerated time,” Adefeso says. “The introduction of the fixed posts created confidence in the populace who had long regarded the house-to-house immunization with suspicion.”

Many residents of northern Nigeria are devout Muslims, and they frown upon strangers going door-to-door for any reason. Administering the oral polio vaccine at fixed posts, such as medical clinics, respects their religious and cultural values.
The new strategy is also aimed at strengthening routine immunization by promoting the availability of vaccines at health centers. Currently, Nigeria has the second-lowest rate of routine immunizations in the world. Health officials hope that eventually more parents will bring their children for polio immunizations, even when there are no supplementary immunization activities.

Edugie Abebe, National Program on Immunization chief executive, is upbeat about the outcome of the new approach. “I believe that if we continue what we are doing — engaging the states and local governments — before the end of the year, we would have made significant inroads into reducing the transmission of the wild poliovirus,” she told Voice of America.