By Edoamaowo Udeme
The Northern Nigeria Traditional Leaders Committee on Primary Health Care yesterday vowed to adopt role modelling and sensitization to boost routine immunisation coverage and uptake of family planning services in the region.
The traditional leaders made the remarks during the emergency meeting
of Northern Traditional Leaders on community engagement frame work
organised by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency
(NPHCDA) in Abuja.
Speaking at the event, The Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaila Mera, said northern traditional leaders would adopt role modelling strategy and to boost routine
immunisation indices in the regions.
“We will take our children to the vaccination centres and they would also volunteer to vaccinate other children to improve confidence in the system”
“This act will generally motivate people to access the services”.
A lot of communities don’t have access to Primary Health Care facilities and the lack of access is due to distance or because
the routinely needed medical officers were not available”.
He added that availability of traditional means of providing care and cure to some ailments are some of the factors that inhibits some parents from accessing routine immunisation programmes in the region.
Mera therefore noted that the tradition in the north was that husbands were heads of families, as the as head of the families, they make decisions on behalf of every member of the family.
“Our first point of call was to talk to the husbands, and try to change their attitude on routine immunisation and access to other primary health care services,’’ he said.
Earlier, Shehu of Bama, Alhaji Kyari Elkanemi, said the meeting was
commendable as it reflected the determination of the traditional
institution to support government efforts to improve the health of the people.
Elkanemi, who is also the Chairman, Northern Traditional Leaders
Committee on Primary Health Care called on other traditional leaders to use the platform of community engagement framework to mobilise mothers and care givers for routine immunisation uptake.
In his remark, Dr Faisal Shuaib, Executive Director, NPHCDA hands over the Community engagement guidelines for traditional leaders as a guiding documents across northern Nigeria bearing in mind that contest will differ across the states.
“providing the document that shows how it should be done in general principles is what we are doing today; It is working documents thatccould be improve upon”.
“We are very aware that the situation in southern Nigeria would be different from what we are doing today and southern Nigeria is our next point of call,’’ he said
He added that the frame work has described how the emir, the district
head, and village or community head could be used to strengthen routine immunisation and primary healthcare as a whole.
“The most of the burden of routine immunisation coverage in Nigeria was high in the north that was why the agency was starting with traditional leaders of the region”. Fasal noted
He added that the agency would engage the traditional leaders from the
southern Nigeria.
“We have seen historically that because the traditional leaders were engaged into polio eradication, we have move to 25 months now without any new case of wild polio virus in the country”.
“Exactly, the same pathway we are taking with routine immunisation,’’ he added
