Healthcare

COVID-19: Nigeria to Vaccinate 109m Citizens in Two Years – Official

Published

4 years ago

February 16, 2021

Eric

The Nigerian government has disclosed plans to vaccinate approximately 109 million people against COVID-19 over a period of two years.

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, while speaking at Monday’s weekly briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, said only those eligible will be vaccinated.

He said the federal government plans to vaccinate all eligible population from 18 years and above, including pregnant women.

He, however, said the decision to vaccinate any pregnant woman will be made in consultation with her healthcare provider.

He said there will be considerations of whether she is at high risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus or not, based on guidance from the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE).

“She is likely to be at high risk for example, if she is a frontline health worker, a support staff or a first responder in the different spheres of the security architecture of our country,” Mr Shuaib said.

“After excluding those that are under 18 years old, we plan to vaccinate approximately 109 million Nigerians that will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination over the course of two years.”

The Nigerian government is expected to begin the roll-out of approved COVID-19 vaccines by the end of February.

The country is expecting an initial 16 million doses of the Oxford- AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines through the Vaccines Global Assess Facility (COVAX) by the end of February.

An additional 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines donated by telecom giant, MTN, will also be delivered to the country by the end of February, the minister of health, Osagie Ehanire, said at the briefing.

Mr Ehanire said efforts are ongoing to ensure the effective roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines when they finally arrive.

He said the Vaccine Coordination Committee has been inaugurated to address diverse issues peculiar to COVID-19 vaccine acquisition by Nigeria.

“Their function is to advise on coordinating access to acquisition and distribution of vaccines when available, and on our immunization strategy.”

Mr Shuaib explained that those eligible to receive the vaccines have been identified using the World Health Organization(WHO) vaccine allocation framework and prioritization roadmap, as well as data from the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC).

“They are the frontline healthcare workers, support staff; including those that work in high-risk areas such as point of entry workers, rapid response teams, contact tracing teams, COVID-19 vaccination teams and strategic leadership,” Mr Shuaib said.

“People aged 50 years and above, People aged 18 – 49 years with significant co-morbidities and additional at-risk groups.”

Mr Shuaib said the Technical Working Group has developed a strategy of pre-registration and scheduling the target population to avoid over-crowding at vaccination posts.

He said the strategy called the TEACH approach will harness all the benefits of traditional, electronic, assisted and concomitant house-to-house registration to optimize the use of innovative technology.

“The TEACH approach entails: T: Traditional method of vaccinating target populations using desk review of available data sources, identifying the vaccination sites and rolling out.

“E: Electronic self-registration for health workers and the public; a link which provides an online form will be provided. A: Assisted electronic registration

“C: Concomitant e-registration during walk in to fixed sites/health facilities. H: House-to-House registration using volunteers for additional push to rapidly increase the e-registration,” he said.

He noted that a URL link will be rolled out this week for healthcare workers, to register and schedule them for the COVID-19 vaccination.

He said plans are ongoing to train and empower health care workers on administering these vaccines.

He explained that his agency will engage additional personnel in a bid to achieve the coverage level desired and also to ensure best practices in vaccine handling and management.

“The plan is to train healthcare workers, supervisors and monitors at all levels in the next one to two weeks,” Mr Shuaib said.

Premium Times

Healthcare

NAFDAC Reiterates Ban on Sales, Consumption of Sachet Alcoholic Drinks

Published

5 months ago

June 20, 2024

Eric

Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Moji Adeyeye, has reaffirmed that the ban on the sale and consumption of sachet alcoholic beverages in the country is still in force.

Adeyeye announced this on Wednesday during a press briefing in Lagos.

She said: “The ban on sachet alcohol is a ministerial directive and the ban still remains until the ministers respond. The meeting last week Thursday is a continuation of the discussion.

“The outcome of the meeting is that the ministers should write a memo to the Speaker (of Reps) and the House (of Reps), and the Representative of the Speaker, Prof Jake Dan-Azumi then said we should continue the discussion after the recess of the House members in July. So, the discussion continues.”

The Deputy Spokesman for the House of Representatives, Philip Agbese, disclosed last Friday that the House and NAFDAC resolved to lift the ban on the sale and consumption of sachet alcoholic beverages.

Agbese said the resolution to temporarily lift the ban was reached after a meeting between the House Committee and NAFDAC officials.

He said the lifting of the ban would end when the economy fully recovers from its current strain.

On February 1, 2024, NAFDAC commenced the enforcement of the ban on the importation, manufacture, distribution, sale and use of alcoholic beverages in sachets, PET, and glass bottles of 200ml and below.

The NAFDAC DG said the decision was based on the recommendation of a high-powered committee of the Federal Ministry of Health, NAFDAC, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, and the industry represented by the Association of Food, Beverages and Tobacco Employers, Distillers and Blenders Association of Nigeria, in December 2018.

However, the move to enforce the ban has generated repeated protests by distillers and labour unions, who said the ban would cost 500,000 workers their jobs, and ruin N800bn investments.

Meanwhile, medical experts warned that lifting the ban on alcoholic beverages will lead to acute health complications, increased road traffic accidents, increased risk of abuse of alcohol, liver problems, heart-related problems, and cancers, among others.

Healthcare

Adeleke Wins Osun Guber Election

Published

2 years ago

July 17, 2022

Eric

The Independent National Electoral Commission has declared the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Ademola Adeleke, the winner of the Osun governorship election.

The Returning Officer for the election and Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, announced that Adeleke got a total of 403,371 votes beating the incumbent, Adegboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress, who got 375,027 votes in a keenly contested race.

He said, “I declare Adeleke Ademola Jackson Nurudeen, on behalf of the chairman of INEC, of the PDP, having satisfied the requirement of the law, is hereby declared the winner and he is returned elected.”

According to the total votes recorded by the electoral umpire, the PDP won 17 of the 30 Local Government Areas of the state, while the APC won the remaining 13.

The PDP won in Ede North, Ede South, Ifelodun, Boluwaduro, Egbedore, Odo Otin, Osogbo, Ila, Atakumosa West, Olorunda, Ilesa West, Obokun, Oriade, Orolu, Ife North, Irepodun, and Ejigbo LGAs.

The APC, on the other hand, won in Boripe, Ilesa East, Ayedire, Ifedayo, Ife Central, Ayedaade, Iwo, Olaoluwa, Isokan, Atakumosa East, Irewole, Ife South, and Ife East LGAs.

The PUNCH reported that Adeleke and his nephew, award-winning Nigerian singer, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, were seen in a video that surfaced online, celebrating an early lead when the counting started.

Healthcare

No COVID-19 Death in Nine Days, Says NCDC

Published

4 years ago

April 21, 2021

Eric

The Nigerian Center for Disease Control reported zero COVID-19-related death for the ninth consecutive days as the nation’s fatality toll remains 2,061.

The NCDC disclosed this on its official Twitter handle on Tuesday.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the country last registered a COVID-19-related death on April 11.

It reports that aside from April 11, the number of reported deaths in week 14, which was April 6, was two from two states.

NAN reports that cumulatively since the outbreak began in week 9, 2020, there have been reported 2,061 deaths with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.3 per cent.

NCDC said it conducted 1,870,915 COVID-19 tests since Feb. 27, 2020, adding that 120 infections were registered as of Tuesday, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 164,423.

“The breakdown of cases is as follows: Enugu-53, Lagos-22, Rivers-18, Ogun-8, FCT-7, Abia-6, Kano-6 and Bauchi-1.

“Today’s report includes data from Enugu recorded between April 14 and April 19,” it said.

The agency announced that another 22 people recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, adding that cumulatively 154,406 COVID-19 recoveries had been reported since Feb. 27, 2020.

It noted that a multi-sectoral National Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), activated at Level 3, has continued to coordinate the national response activities in the country.

The agency said it had continued to lead the national public health response to ensure that Nigerians were protected from the virus since the first case of the disease was confirmed in the country.

“Aside from significant control of local transmission, one of the key areas of priority is the institution of public health measures to prevent further importation and exportation of the virus.

“In addition to the already established and widely expanded network of public health laboratories, the NCDC has also optimised testing through enrolment and operationalisation of private testing laboratories for increased accessibility,” it said.

NCDC said this initiative had resulted in scaled-up testing nationwide and efficient process in testing inbound and outbound travellers as they are mandated to test via private facilities.

It said this is in line with the national mandatory quarantine protocols and procedures.

The public health agency said the interventions had tremendously reduced the number of likely importation and exportation of cases.

It said, however, that trading and presentation of fake results at departure and arrival halls by some elements in some of the international airports has posed challenges recently.

“This poses significant danger particularly to travellers with genuine negative results, thereby resulting in further risk of exportation or importation of the disease,” it said.

It said the result verification system is aimed at validating the authenticity of COVID-19 results through building a platform for the verification of results and effectively manage and monitor the network of private laboratories testing.

The agency said others were to get accurate and prompt testing data and improve the quality and efficiency of the laboratory testing network through analysing data generated from this Information system.

It said that an important outcome was training staff of the airlines and of all five international airports with capacity to verify results from outbound travellers via “QR Code and USSD” built on result verification system.

The agency said that this was in line with its mandate of ensuring national and global health security through prevention of importation and exportation of the virus.

It said that it would continue to employ evidence-based public health strategies and initiatives aimed at protecting Nigerians against COVID-19 and other epidemic-prone diseases.

NAN