The FCT Primary Health Care Board on Friday reiterated its commitment to end polio in the country. Dr Rukaya Wamako, the Director of the board, disclosed this at a town hall meeting with journalists to inaugurate the first round of the 2020 National Immunisation Plus Days (NIPDs) in the territory.
“We have been doing this polio immunisation for a long time, all in the aim of removing it out of the country, we were near to the top of this exercise in 2016 but an issue happened and caused a setback.
“We are determined this period that the 2020 exercise is going to be a mass campaign, especially this first round billed to start tomorrow Feb. 15.
“It is a campaign that will cut across all the nooks and crannies of the FCT,” she said.
She said that the FCT’s target on the virus is on the ‘end-game-campaign,’ with the determination to acquire the certification from the WHO that Nigeria is now polio free before the end of the year.
She called on FCT residents particularly mothers to cooperate with the vaccinators, and also not to allow the drugs which the government has purchased with huge amount of money to be wasted.
She added that polio vaccines in addition to fighting the virus itself, helps fight other diseases in the body such as meningitis, measles, and called on mothers not to take the exercise for granted.
“Polio vaccines is safe, a lot of research has been done on it, there is nothing harmful in the vaccines as some think, any mother who prevents her child from taking the vaccine has cheated on that child.
