Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee (PSC) on Covid-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha, has disclosed that only 24.4 per cent of total eligible population in the country has been fully vaccinated, as he also noted that Nigeria has continued to experience changes in the factors that influence demand and uptake of Covid-19 vaccines.
Mustapha disclosed this, Monday, at the official launch in Abuja, of a new vaccination strategy, tagged; SCALES 3.0 in the campaign against the Covid-19 infection.
Describing the vaccination statistics as low, Mustapha said the new strategy launched by the PSC on Covid-19 and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) is expected to implement strict deployment of well-trained supervisors; on the job mentoring of vaccinators and the use of GPS to ensure that supervisors also cover not only urban areas, but rural and hard to reach communities.
Similarly, the NPHCDA put the total number of fully vaccinated eligible population at 27,703,573 million as at August 8, this year, a figure representing about 25 per cent of the populace.
SCALES 3.0 is acronym for Service Delivery, Communication, Accountability, Logistics, Electronic Management of Immunization Data, (EMID), and Supportive Supervision.
The strategy which retains integration of Covid-19 vaccination with other primary health care services, however, uses an implementation approach that seeks to address bottlenecks on service delivery, communication, accountability, logistics, EMID and supportive supervision from bottom-up and state specific contexts.
“These changing situations are not uniform across the country. They vary from state to state, and therefore require continuous review of our strategies for promoting demand and ensuring vaccine access and accountability,” said Mr Mustapha.
The PSC chairman noted that earlier in February 2022, the NPHCDA launched optimized SCALES 2.0 strategy, which has proven to be effective in ramping up Covid-19 vaccination coverage.
He said the proportion of fully vaccinated Nigerians is still low when compared to the set target, adding that present record of only 24.4% of the total eligible population of fully vaccinated as at August 3 2022 leaves much to be desired.
Mustapha said the proportion of fully vaccinated Nigerians is still low when compared to the set target, adding that present record of only 24.4 per cent of the total eligible population of fully vaccinated as at August 3, 2022 leaves much to be desired.
“We should not lower our guard or give in to complacency as the virus is still very much around and can mutate. We must encourage all around us to get vaccinated. Let us also, not relent on observing the non-pharmaceutical measures – wear the mask, keep physical distance and wash our hands regularly. Until we have vaccinated at least 70 per cent of eligible Nigerians to achieve herd immunity, no one is safe. Like HIV, COVID-19 NO DEY SHOW FOR FACE,” he added.
On his part, Minister of Health Dr Osagie Ehanire said the Federal Government has through the NPHCDA, deployed several strategies including the optimized SCALES 2.0 strategy to ramp up integrated COVID-19 vaccination and Primary Health Care services across the country.
“Consequently, our vaccination effort has scaled up significantly. However, the total performance still leaves much to be desired. As of 3rd August 2022, only 24.4 percent of the total eligible population has been fully vaccinated. Only 3 states (Nasarawa, Jigawa and Kano) have vaccination coverage of over 50 percent, leaving 34 states performing sub-optimally in terms of COVID-19 vaccination coverage. Hence, the need for the team to refine the current Scales 2.0strategies to accelerate COVID-19 vaccination”. He added.
Dr Osagie said the SCALES 3.0 strategy will be anchored on an intensive 3 months campaign, performance-based incentives, optimized integrated package of services, decentralized and incentivized demand generation strategies, partner’s coordination and accountability, and state-specific context and strategies. Based on these principles, the strategy is poised to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus and gain the desired herd immunity as quickly as possible.
Remarking at the launch, Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib said as at 8th of August 2022, the number of eligible persons who are fully vaccinated currently stands at 27,703,573 million. Therefore, the proportion of the total eligible population that has been vaccinated in Nigeria is about 25 per cent.
“Although the progress we recorded with optimized SCALES 2.0 implementation is appreciable, our strategic review showed that there has also been an increased low COVID-19 risk perception which needs to be overcome. Our disaggregated states performance analyses also revealed that there are important state-specific bottlenecks that must be addressed in their various contexts for us to see improved vaccine uptake,” he said.
Dr. Shuaib said the strategy retains integration of COVID-19 vaccination with other PHC services, but uses an implementation approach that seeks to address bottlenecks on service delivery, communication, accountability, logistics, EMID and supportive supervision from bottom-up and state specific contexts.
“On the service delivery, SCALES 3.0 will operate on focused campaign mode with mobile and special teams taking vaccines to where people live and work. This will address the operational issues with the fixed posts, temporary fixed posts and mass vaccination sites that were observed in SCALES 2.0”. He added.
Dr Faisal said SCALES 3.0 will employ decentralized demand generation approaches, targeting health workers, grassroots opinion leaders/influencers, traditional leaders, religious leaders and community referrals which he said is expected to strengthen the results from our targeted advocacy, media and community engagement.