Kwara governor seeks cooperation of residents in tackling polio

Gov. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara on Tuesday in Ilorin called on the people of the state to assist government in tackling the transmission of the polio virus across the state.

Abdulrazaq made the call during the flag – off of the polio outbreak response activities in the state held at Tanke, in Ilorin South Local Government Area.

He noted that the state government had already released counterpart fund to enable the state’s immunisation teams to recruit additional members and mobilise senior supervisors at the state and LGA levels.

Abdulrasaq said the National Polio Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC) had notified the state of the isolation and confirmation of circulating vaccine Derived Polio virus from a three – year old female child in Okuta, Baruten LGA, in January 2019.

He said the immunisation teams and partners rose to the occasion by conducting series of outbreak response activities with the support of the NEOC.

Abdulrazaq said the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, World Health Organisation, UNICEF and Rotary among other partners were providing the required assistance with the state government.

The governor said funding would include providing logistics for the movement of teams, vaccines and cold chain equipment and increasing community awareness through jingles to ensure wider publicity among others.

He said the government would repair and service cold rooms to improve capacity for freezing of ice packs for movement of vaccines from place to place.

Abdulrazaq appealed to mothers, caregivers, heads of households, religion houses, markets and schools to make all children under five years of age available for the vaccination exercise.

He said it was unacceptable for any parent, care giver or government to watch “our future generations being paralysed from vaccines preventable diseases like polio.”

In his speech, Dr Abimbola Folorunsho, Executive Secretary of Kwara State Primary Health Care Agency, said the state presently accounted for 50 per cent of polio cases in Nigeria due to the outbreak.

Folorunsho lamented that there were eight children already paralysed from the polio outbreak, adding that some terrains in the state has problem of accessibility to people.

Speaking earlier, Mr Oladele Ricky, the Rotary Club representative on Polio in Kwara District 9125, disclosed that the organisation had spent two billion US Dollars worldwide to fight polio.

Ricky pledged the support of the organisation in engaging with partners to fight the disease across Nigeria.