Kogi state Government has taken delivery of over three million doses of Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis Type-A Vaccines for the treatment and immunization of more than 2.7 million indigenes of the state from age 1-29.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr Idris Omede who disclosed this while inspecting the vaccines and the materials yesterday said that the supplies were a proactive measure against possible outbreak of the killer disease.
Dr Omede said that there were various species of meningitis but the Type-A, tagged “Men-A”, was most prevalent and cause of millions of deaths in Africa, adding: “It normally comes between November and April of the following year.”
The commissioner said that the campaign was expected to cover age 1 to 29 because it constituted about 70 per cent of any population cluster globally and translates into about 2.7 million of Kogi population.
The items delivered with the vaccines according to commissioner, include AD syringes, 3.19 million;
Safety boxes, 35,333; vaccination cards, 2.9 million; Registers, 2,490; 5ml S/N, 335,747 and Pen markers, 1,661 among others.
According to the health commissioner, unlike the ORT immunization vaccines, syringes and needles would be used to administer the Men-A vaccination stressing that though it was expected to record more wastages, provisions had been made for such.
“A lot of time, energy and expertise has been put into this. We have ensured that our health workers and medical personnel at the state and Local Governments have been retrained and refreshed for this exercise”, he said.
The commissioner assured that the vaccines were safe, secure and not likely to cause any harm as he urged the people to take advantage of the exercise, adding that those to be immunized would remain immune to the disease for 10 years.
He said that an agreement had been struck with Dangote Cement to help dispose wastages likely to be generated from the exercise, in its incinerators at no cost to the state government.
Omede said the State Government in its counterpart contribution to the exercise scheduled to run from October 21st to 30th, had taken responsibility for training, monitoring and supervision, social mobilization and logistics.
