Ondo State government has expressed its commitment to ensuring effective implementation of the measles campaign commencing on October 5th through 10th October, 2024, declaring that a total of 924,119 children will be targeted for immunization against child killer diseases.
The Deputy State Health Educator, Ondo State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Mrs Olubunmi Obaromi declared this at a Media Orientation on HPV/Non Polio Supplemental Immunization Integrated activities held in Oyo, Oyo State on 26th September, 2024.
Obaromi while presenting an overview of the integrated SIAs, disclosed that the state is targeting a total of 924,119 children during the campaign.
She noted that the state has paid Advocacy visits to relevant stakeholders, held sensitization meetings with Education stakeholders as well as have held a Town Hall meeting with Religious, traditional leaders, opinion leaders, medical union, Iyalaje/Iyaloja, women groups, CBOs, FBOs, Military/Paramilitaryaming other.
A total of 203 wards have been engaged in community dialogues while town announcements have been made in all communities, Market storm/sensitization and Rallies.
Also, representative of the State Primary Health care Development Agency immunization officer, Mrs Justinah Yetunde Aladesuyi said that the State team just came back from a National training of the trainers recently.
According to her, such training is being held in Akure, the state capital to train the LGA teams which comprises of Primary Health Care Coordinator, State technical facilitator, Local immunization officers Cold chain officers, Disease surveillance officers, Health information officers and Social mobilization officers from all the local Government areas of Ondo State.
“They will go and cascade it in their different LGAs and ward to train, the ward focal person’s, vaccinators, Recorders and town announcers for the implementation of the measles campaign. All the data tools and Measles vaccine have been pushed to all the LGAs in the state,” she affirmed.
She further explained that the target age for measles is 9months to 59months, with a percentage rate of 17% of the total population. Target age for Routine immunization she added is 0-23 months affirming the readiness of the state for Measles implementation.
Other states who also expressed their readiness for the campaign included Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, and Oyo state respectively.
Ogun targets a total of 1,136,952 for ages 9-59months while Ekiti targets 624, 554 from the total numbers of 3,673,848 million children.
