Lagos Begins Child Immunization Today

As the Local Immunization Days (LIDs) begins in Lagos State today the state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris has called on parents, especially mothers and care givers to ensure that their children are immunized.

The commissioner who made the appeal at the weekend said the state wide programme is aimed at immunizing the children against childhood preventable diseases like polio, yellow fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, hepatisB, measles and pertusis.

Idris said immunization remains the most cost-effective strategy in disease prevention and health promoting services , appealing to every parent and care giver in the state to take children under the age of one year to the nearest primary health centers and scheduled vaccination posts between Monday 16th and Friday 20th September, 2013 for necessary vaccinations.

"I hereby seize this opportunity to encourage our parents and care givers to ensure that their children and wards are taken to the primary health care clinics to receive all scheduled immunizations before they are one year old. This is with a view to protecting them against the preventable killer diseases," he said.

He affirmed that the population dynamics of Lagos State puts her at the risk of childhood preventable diseases especially the Wild Polio Virus transmission particularly when there is un-immunized children.

Idris added that the growing population of the state creates an additional pool of children that must be immunized, hence the need for routine immunization services.

He explained that Local Immunization Days (LIDs) is a veritable strategy employed by Lagos State to reduce the number of un-immunized children that were missed during previous immunization days exercise.

The commissioner stressed that the state has been very active in implementing the LIDs, noting that it participates in supplemental immunization activities usually declared by the federal Ministry of Health through the National Primary Health Care Agency.

He noted that strategies put in place by state government to strengthen immunization services include getting immunization outreach sessions to get to underserved and hard-to-reach communities; increasing the number of immunization posts and the number of immunization sessions in the health facilities.


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