By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
Following repeated cases of wild polio virus in Nigeria, an effective innoculation programme aimed at reducing its scourge has commenced across the country.
PROMPT NEWS reports that as at the last count, no fewer than 9 million vaccines have been distributed to states across Nigeria including Sokoto, Kano, Bauchi, Zamfara, Borno, Rivers state amongst others.
However, the distribution scheme is mainly facilited by eHealth Africa, a non governmental entity in Nigeria.
Giving insights into the polio virus vaccine distribution scheme, Atef Fawaz, Executive Director, eHealth told the public at a One-Day Workshop tagged “Digital Innovations in Public Health Practice: Lessons and Impact”, held at Sandralia Hotel Abuja, that over 9 million doses of vaccines have been distributed despite challenges associated with insecurity in the country.
He said most of the interventions in vaccine delivery were spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to bridge gaps identified.
Said Fawaz: “Most of our solutions are driven by an analysis of what the needs are. We always try to identify a problem and work around solving it and this was particularly how the vaccine delivery solution was developed to make sure that no one is left unvaccinated due to logistical challenges.
“We understand the challenges in the whole nation, especially when it comes to logistics, mostly in very remote areas and we developed a solution to make sure that vaccines can reach everywhere at the same time, focusing a lot on accountability and transparency. READ ALSO:
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“We do it in such a way that everyone could see at a point in time where the vaccines were picked from, and where they are delivered to, so it’s a full system that allows monitoring of stocks, request of new stocks, and making sure that vaccines are delivered to very remote areas.
“We have proved that by running the project in Kano ,Bauchi, Zamfara and the programme is currently still running in Sokoto state, we deliver to basically all the health facilities. This has been quite effective and has reduced stock outs to a bare minimum number.
“The impact is, as you can see the numbers I mean, more than 9 million doses of vaccines have been delivered and this was never something that has ever been done before.
“This has direct impact on everyone’s health, you know, especially children that are from zero to five and need to get their routine immunisation. So it does have a direct impact on giving everyone a better health for the future”.
Also speaking at the event, Murtala Bello, Director of Pharmaceutical Services, who corroborated what Fawaz had earlier said the workshop provides an opportunity to explore more digital solutions to healthcare delivery.
Bello who doubles as State Logistics Officer for Sokoto State Primary Health Care Development Agency, expressed satisfaction that the innovation was quite impactful in the public health sector.
Said he: “This workshop is very important because it’s a learning forum where we hear from people who have been implementing different digital solutions towards improving healthcare delivery in the country.
“We have partnered with the conveners of this workshop in my state, eHealth Africa and what they are doing for us now is delivering vaccines to our health facilities using the same proven digital solutions.
“They are deploying a software called Lomis deliver, which we have had a lot of experience with and now we’re here to see what other additional digital health solutions exists”.
On his part, Jamil Galadanci, Senior Manager, Software Engineering in Software Engineering Global Health Informatics Units,ehealth Africa, said Lomis which stands for logistic management information system was born out of the problem of high percentage of stockouts in many of our health facilities across the country.
He said at some point Nigeria was reported the highest zero dose children in the entire world and that’s the reason why we invented the logistic management information system to improve the delivery and management of those vaccines in our health facilities and to provide a near real time, visibility of what’s happening across those facilities, which in turn would improve accountability, transparency and most importantly, the efficiency of how we manage those facilities.
