The Nigeria Solidarity Support Fund (NSSF) has donated N305 million to the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) for execution of Covid-19 vaccination in six states.
Disclosing the donation in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, NSSF’s Chief Executive Officer, Fejiro Chinye-Nwoko, said the NSSF was collaborating with the NPHCDA to help Nigeria recover quickly from the impact of the pandemic.
The funds, according to NSSF, will support NPHCDA’s Covid-19 vaccination programme in Ogun, Adamawa, Edo, Enugu, Nasarawa, and Katsina states.
Nigeria’s population is estimated to be over 200 million but less than six million Nigerians have so far received their first doses of Covid-19 vaccine, according to the NPHCDA.
‘We have two main objectives for the project. We are supporting health system strengthening, we are also supporting the vulnerable Nigerians and supporting Nigerian youths’, Chinye-Nwoko said.
‘NSSF, in collaboration with the NPHCDA, came on board to discuss challenges with vaccination and vaccine uptake in Nigeria.
‘We are also supporting the actual vaccination of Nigerians. Six states were selected because we wanted to start with one million vaccination and instead of concentrating it in one state, we want to spread it across six states.
‘It involves an initial donation of N305 million to NPHCDA to support vaccination to the six states.
‘With the NPHCDA, we have also been involved in advocacy and campaign. We know that vaccine hesitancy is an issue in Nigeria’.
Viral spread of misinformation is a global problem that is empowered by information and communication technology (ICT).
Some of the widely shared misinformation in Africa include conspiracies around unproven treatments, false cures and anti-vaccine messages.
According to UN Global Pulse, information on Covid-19 was shared and viewed more than 16 billion times and mentioned over six million times on Twitter and web-based news sites between November 2020 and March 2021 in 47 African countries, including Nigeria.
‘A lot of people are sceptical about the impact of vaccination in Nigeria and they are resisting the vaccine’, she said.
‘We have been involved in mass vaccination campaigns across the country through the use of radio, television, newspapers, digital media and other means of the campaign. We are also involved in strategy’.
She advised Nigerians to take advantage of the vaccination campaign in the states.
Photo source: Maryland GovPics
