The Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Primary Health Care Development Board on Wednesday said it had mobilised proprietors of private schools to boost coverage and ensure acceptability of Oral Polio Vaccines, OPVs.
The Acting Executive Secretary of the board, Mathew Ashikeni, made the disclosure in an interview in Abuja.
Mr Ashikeni explained that the task of wooing private schools to ensure that pupils in their schools were vaccinated became necessary due to challenges faced by team of vaccinators in such schools.
“I have met with the leadership of private schools to talk to them on the importance of immunisation to children and to also seek for their collaboration in the course of eradicating polio from the country.
“From information available to me, there are more than 1,000 private schools in FCT and that shows how it is important to partner with them to boost coverage,” he said.
According to him, FCT is one of the high-risk states and will do everything possible to ensure every child under five years in the territory is immunised.
The acting executive secretary disclosed that the management of the primary health care board had also met with the leadership of FCT Hospital Management Board to strengthen the partnership that had been existing between them.
He said that strengthening the collaboration was important because the board used facilities of secondary health care for routine immunisations.
Mr Ashikeni, however, appealed to area councils in FCT to release their counterpart funding in good time for immunisation programmes.
He announced that Jan. 20 to January 23 had been scheduled for first round of vaccination against polio and 900,000 children were targeted to be immunised in the territory.
NAN
