Bauchi targets 2m U-5 children, flags off polio immunization, malaria vaccination

Not fewer than 2 million U-5 children are to be reached as Bauchi State Government, through the Primary Healthcare Development Board, with support from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other partners, on Monday, flagged off the March round of immunization for polio, malaria and other children killer diseases.

The flagging off was conducted by the Executive Secretary of the Board, Dr Rilwanu Mohammed, at the Primary Healthcare Centre, Bayan Fada, in Bauchi LGA.

Speaking at the ceremony, Rilwanu Mohammed stated that, “For us, this is the first immunization that we carrying out in Bauchi State for the year 2026. The present government actually decided that because of the presence of circulating virus in other States and Bauchi state, we need to carry out this activation.”

According to him,”Polio was taken out by the year 2000 out of this world, not only in Nigeria, everywhere. But the circulating virus is still going on and coming out. There are two forms of circulating virus. One is the environment and one is the human being. So we need to carry out immunization to take care of that. We need to take care of that with vaccination.”

He also stated that,”So, the present government decided to put a stake for all over the state, not only Bauchi. That we are going to have this immunization introduction of polio. And then we have about 4,200 teams that are going house to house. We have about 2,220 teams that are official teams that are going from place to place to take care of places. We are using 1,840 staff at the state level, local government level.”

According to him,”Facilitators have been deployed in all our formations at the local government level, constantly. And today is the day for for the commencement of the immunization. Today is special because we have additional people that will be doing today. We started with malaria vaccination and today we are going to integrate this vaccination with that of malaria.”

Rilwanu Mohammed added that, “People have complained, why polio every time? Why polio? This time around, as you see, the government has introduced malaria vaccination. And then wife of the Governor, last month, there was actually a flag off of the distribution of malaria vaccine in our local immunization sites.”

He stressed that,”So, we recognize all our formations, particularly we are going to use opportunities of going house to house, we’re going to do vaccination, we’re going to schools, make sure that we also carry our vaccinations, our malaria vaccination together.”

“So, we’re going to have a joint activity, polio campaign plus routine immunization plus malaria vaccination. And just to inform you that we have mobilized community through radio, television, traditional rulers. There were a lot of meetings actually involving both all the stakeholders, and the individual media were involved, the media organization were also called on to mobilize communities through their radio jingles,” he added.

He further stated that,”So at this campaign, we’re happy there are people targeted. We are doing a new programme. So I will inform the people that are not here that please come out and allow your children to be vaccinated and immunized.”

The EC urged the women to, “Please make sure that you invite your neighbours to go to the vaccination points. The vaccine is safe  and effective. So we need to make sure that all our children are vaccinated. But this week and on those days, we’re the second phase of malaria vaccination. So let’s use the opportunity to vaccinate our children between five months to two years for malaria vaccination.”

But the volume campaign, our vaccination is one from back to four years. So these are the targets we are counting. So we are targeting about 2 million children in Bauchi state.

Goodwill messages were delivered by partners and donor agencies on the importance of the exercise in the bid to ensure that children lived.