Nigeria is one of the most complex nations in the world in terms of the public health issues that it is facing. With the country’s poor state of healthcare, it is estimated that eight million children are born each year while seven million women are pregnant at any moment. Also, Nigeria has the second highest number of unvaccinated children in the world. It is also a nation with a high maternal mortality. So, there is need to ensure quality and adequate healthcare for the vulnerable, especially in rural communities.
UNICEF Nigeria’s Chief of Health, Eduardo Celades, spoke to the media on the organization’s interventions to improve upon the services of primary healthcare centers across the country. In 2022, Nigeria had the biggest outbreak of measles in the world. It shows that Nigeria is a country with extremely weak health systems, so the agency is trying to tackle the issue from different perspectives. It involves the United Nations and UNICEF working together with the government, journalists and social media influencers to make the needed changes.
Children’s access to vaccine the challenge in reducing child mortality.
Chief Celades said the organization has a big range of vaccines. Presently, there are about 18 antigens in the country on the routine immunization scale. Some of them include: Rotavirus for diarrhea, Pneumococcal vaccine for pneumonia, vaccines for measles, diphtheria and tetanus, and so on. These vaccines have been proven to work and they are one of the most powerful historical tools to reduce child mortality. The challenge in this situation is ensuring that all the children who need them have access to them.
If this is achieved, Nigeria’s data could well mimic the global number of maternal deaths, which have fallen from around 446,000 in 2000 to about 287,000 in 2020, a 36 percent decrease. Despite various challenges, Nigeria is progressing towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) three. SDG-3 is focused on health and well-being for all, including a bold commitment to end the epidemics and other communicable diseases by 2030. However, this progress achieved so far is insufficient to reach the targets.
UNICEF progress insufficiency a matter of concern in Nigeria’s healthcare.
Despite going through the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria has still been able to show some progress. One area in which this occurred is in how routine immunization coverage increased. The Nigerian government was able to achieve that. But while child mortality has been reduced over the last few years, it is insufficient. Some of the reasons include the fact that neonatal mortality is not reducing and maternal mortality is also the same with the trend. The UNICEF member of staff said that these variables have reduced by 12 percent in the last 20 years, but the progress is not enough to reach the targets.
He said UNICEF’s main approach is to try to accelerate interventions to make an impact. The benchmark year 2030 is just seven years away. If the trend continues, the progress will not be sufficient to achieve SDG-3 by then. It is also important that UNICEF and the government work together and mobilize resources. Some donors will leave the country in a few years. If this is done with the window of opportunity by working together, the targets can be achieved. Chief. Celades noted that this issue is not only a concern but also a reality.
The agency is trying to strengthen primary healthcare to accelerate progress.
In addition to the estimates of childbirths and pregnant women, Chief. Celades said the organization’s main concern is how they can ensure that these women and children can survive, how they can reduce child mortality (especially in newborn children), and how they can ensure that no woman dies because of pregnancy. According to him, UNICEF reports still show that about 82,000 pregnant women die because of pregnancy-related causes every year. UNICEF as a body is trying to liaise with the government to strengthen the primary healthcare and to have enough human resources, commodities, deliveries, abundance of resources and good data to be able to bend the curve and accelerate progress.
Related Link
Wikipedia: Website
Vaccines, powerful tool to cut child mortality – Reports have shown that global maternal deaths decreased by 36%. – Express your point of view.
Vaccines play a huge role in checking and stopping diseases infection. When vaccines are given to children, it helps immunize them against these deadly diseases.
The vaccination of children has really shows that there is serious reduction of child mortality across the globe and Nigeria is not left out on this.Many diseases that normally killed or paralyzed children before has not been killing nowadays because of the immunization but lots still need to be done to eradicate it completely.
Vaccines, powerful tool to cut child mortality. Very nice, we need more of this vaccines. Am so happy that rate of children disease has reduce due the vaccine
Vaccines are a vital tool for reducing child mortality, and their benefits are numerous. The more children are vaccinated, the greater the potential benefit, resulting in improved outcomes for children and communities alike. Vaccines save lives, and their importance cannot be overstated.
Reducing child mortality is very important and measure of vaccination has proven very effective in this area. Government should ensure a reform in the health system to accommodate free and accessible vaccination of children.
Vaccine will really help the children from disease and take care of their health, preventing disease from getting to them. Vaccine will really help in saving lives
Vaccines are very important to children, it helps them develop a strong immune system later in future. The issue with vaccination in Nigeria is that people don’t trust the quality of the vaccines in this country so they feel it’s more harmful than. Useful
I believe that it’s imperative that we guarantee that vulnerable people, particularly those living in rural regions, have the opportunity to receive medical care that is of sufficient quality and quantity, and that this will be of great assistance to such individuals.
This vaccination move will really keep more children from contacting all these diseases that will affect them so it will be great if they do the vaccination
Child mortality has decreased significantly over the world as a result of immunisation programmes, and that is what we should keep striving to achieve in the country.
The reduction of child mortality rate by 36 percent through the use of powerful tools and vaccines could seen in every part of the world except Nigeria. Though there were decrease but yet to be fully evident. There are factors that is preventing the effort of the healthcare sector from taking root which ignorant to the danger of not vaccinating the children, religious dogmas and poverty in the Land. Government in collaboration with UN, UNICEF and our health sectors to should intensify effort to achieve the SDG-3 which is based on healthcare.
Nigeria is regarded to be having the second highest number of unvaccinated children in the world amidst the powerful tools and vaccines because of several factors which are lack of proper awareness in the rural communities, poor implimentation of the vaccines project, poverty, corruption and religious teachings. These is slowing the pace of achieving the SDG-3 project. However, Government should work with the UN, UNICEF and all concern bodies to make the goals achieveable.