NPHCDA Boss Visits Solidarity Support Fund, As Vaccination Rollout Kicks Off In Ogun State 1 Nov

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib recently paid a working visit to their Partner, the Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund (NSSF) on Friday to debrief the Management on its vaccination rollout which kicks off today, November 1, 2021, in Ogun State.

As one of the beneficiary states of the NSSF donation to NPHCDA, the Agency’s target is to get two million indigenes of the state vaccinated before the year-end festivities commence. This rollout commences just as Lagos state flagged off its mass vaccination campaign on Wednesday, October 28 which is aimed at getting 4 Million residents vaccinated ahead of the festive season.

The urgent meeting between the NPHCDA team and the NSSF team was to align on vaccine campaign goal, objectives, interventions, and key Performance Indicators which was also discussed during Dr Faisal’s visit to the NSSF office in Lagos.

According to Dr. Faisal, “with only 2.9 Million Nigerians vaccinated so far, we need to accelerate our campaign to encourage more Nigerians to come out and get vaccinated’’. He further reiterated that covid vaccines supply was not a concern at the moment. In his words, “we have the jabs, but we need the arms”.

He further stated that this accelerated vaccine campaign is geared at aligning with the WHO target of a 40% vaccination rate by December.

The team also shared the five-service delivery approach that will be adopted to ramp up Covid-19 vaccines uptake in Ogun state. These include the establishment of mass vaccination sites, expansion to all public health facilities, expansion to private health facilities, expansion to corporate institutions (public and private) and establishment of temporary posts – drive-throughs, community pop-ups and outreach sessions

Speaking on behalf of the NSSF, board member, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede reinforced their commitment for the vaccine drive with the initial disbursement of N56 Million to support the rollout in Ogun state and that the organization will be providing other in-kind support as the campaign kicks off. Another such support is a nationwide covid-19 vaccine anti-hesitancy campaign drive planned for the coming weeks which will further enable Nigeria to reach her target by December 2021.

This is the first of several collaborations between both organizations to support the government in strengthening our healthcare system.