Cross River State government has unveiled plan to vaccinate 900,000 children against polio. The exercise will be carried by the state Primary Healthcare Development Agency.
Children from the ages 15 and below are the targeted beneficiaries.
Wife of Cross River State governor, Dr Linda Ayade gave the figures during the official flag-off of outbreak response of Round Two (OBR 2) campaign which took place yesterday in Calabar.
“We are targeting about nine hundred thousand children who are to be vaccinated in the state. We are told that Cross River State and Benue have shown the signs of having the virus.
“Who knows where all of us would have been without vaccination,” Mrs Ayade said.
In her remarks, the director-general, Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, CR- PHCDA, Dr Janet Ekpeyong urged parents residing in the state to make their children available for vaccination to avoid being paralyzed.
“We are asking all parents to notify us of any child 15 years and below with signs of paralyses.
“We are leveraging on the campaign to see that any child less than 15 years that shows signs of paralysis of lower limbs, you should please report to appropriate quarters.
“To tell you how committed we are in our campaign to have a healthy population in time to come, we go to the extent of fraternising with the militants to enable us administer polio vaccines to children in the riverine communities,” she said.
The chairman of the Cross River State Women Medical Doctors, Vivian Mesembe Otu, stated that 50 per cent of children in the state have been vaccinated, stressing that statistics available still showed that a lot of children were yet to be vaccinated.