Stakeholders, especially medical practitioners want original plan to vaccinate health workers, frontline workers, and others with the COVID-19 vacine strictly adhered to.
The stakeholders made the call on Monday at a webinar organised by Yiaga Africa to look at emerging issues and challenges in distribution of the vaccines in Nigeria and to proffer solutions.
Dr Sanusi Mohammed, the chairman, National Committee on Infectious Diseases, said that the initial plan was to vaccinate health workers, frontline workers and those with higher morbidity and mortality rate.
Mohammed said that the idea of vaccinating frontline and health workers was because they were at higher risks due to incessant contacts with patients, so they needed to be protected first.
“The concern here is the deviation from the original plan, what was intended for frontline workers about one per cent of the general population.
“For now, we have 0.1 per cent of the general population, what we are working at is to see the number of health workers covered while we continue sensitisation for citizens before they get vaccinated.
“This is supposed to be phase one and it is important because they are the ones in contact with the patients.
“So they are the ones to be protected first, that way they will have confidence to provide the care and the services.
“The second group to be vaccinated are those with core morbidities and mortality, followed by individuals like the elderly before we come to the general population, this was the original plan.’’
Mohammed said that there was the need to stick to the vaccination plan so that even if the vaccines does not go round, those with higher risk and frontline workers would have been prevented from getting infected.
He said that this would reduce the burden of the disease as well as the mortality rate.
Mohammed said that the misconception raised in the policy brief released by Yiaga Africa about the COVID-19 vaccine was not only in Nigeria but worldwide.
He said that other countries had since backtracked as more than 50 million people have been vaccinated so far worldwide.
According to him, the review of Nigeria’s health indices and the need for the government to declare a state of emergency not just on security but the health sector as well has become imperative.
Mohammed maintained that COVID-19 exposed health systems across the world as lots of things had to be put in place such as brain drain, remuneration of health workers and infrastructure.
He urged the National Assembly to speed up passage of the Infectious Diseases Bill to enhance control over what was happening in the country.
Dr Henry Ewunonu, a medical health advocate and former National Chairman of Nigeria Medical Association’s (NMA) Health Advocacy Committee, said he saw citizens who were neither health workers nor elderly received the vaccine during the first week.
He complained that he was yet to see a legislation, executive order or policy, prohibiting sharp practices in the course of administering COVID-19 vaccine to the population and recommended strict punishment for indiscipline personnel.
Director of Programmes, Yiaga Africa, Cynthia Mbamalu said the webinar conversation on COVID-19 vaccine was important to ensure that the whole process of vaccination was guided by certain principles.
Mbamalu said that this was to ensure that every aspect of the society was catered for.
She urged effective monitoring and evaluation systems should be deployed in the implementation of vaccines in Nigeria.
This, according to her would help in documenting how well Nigeria had done as well as documenting the learning and how to improve on the system.
Dr Ernest Ereke, Director, Yiaga Africa Centre of Legislative Engagement, who presented Yiaga Africa’s policy brief on COVID-19 vaccine management in Nigeria, said the invention of the vaccine was a pivotal moment in the battle against the disease.
Ereke, however, said that there was global challenge in accessing the vaccine.
He said that the inequitable distribution of the vaccines globally would accentuate the divide between the global north and global south.
Ereke added that this would weaken and hamper the fight against the global pandemic because the world was more linked together like never before. (NAN)
