The
Federal Government has established a National Immunization Technical Advisory
Group for the country that will help to stop vaccine preventable diseases like
polio and others.
The
National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), in a statement, on
Monday, said the group, which is to be inaugurated at a later date is chaired
by a renowned medical epidemiologist, Prof. Emeritus Umaru Shehu.
The Minister
of Health, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan at the meeting of the said committee held last
week in Abuja, has expressed delight for having no single case of Wild Polio
Virus (WPV) in the country since July last year, he said that, if Nigeria did
not report any polio case after July 2015, the country should be declared free
of the virus by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Nigeria,
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only three countries still endemic to polio.
India was declared polio-free last year by the WHO.
According
to the minister, membership of the Technical Advisory Group was drawn from
indigenous specialists in public health, infectious diseases, pediatrics,
pathology, pharmacology, social anthropology and communication experts in the
country.
The
objective of the committee, the minister explained, is to provide guidance for
making evidence – based immunization related policy decisions, including choice
of new vaccines and technologies and make recommendations towards improvement
of existing programmes and schedules.
No comments:
Post a Comment