Diphtheria Outbreak: UNICEF Donates 3.1 m Vaccine Dosages

By Ahmed Rufa’i, Dutse

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has donated 3.1 million Diphtheria vaccines as part of the organization’s response to Diphtheria out break in the country.

This was disclosed by the UNICEF country Director, Ms Christian Manduate while speaking during a courtesy visit to the JIgawa state governor, Malam Umar Namadi Danmodi at government house Dutse.

The country Director promised a continuation with interventions and technical support for the improvement of education, healthcare, birth and death registration in the state.

According to her other areas of its intervention included Child Nutrition and other aspects of economic and human capital development

Ms Christian Manduate commended governor Namadi for achieving milestones on child protection and development in the state.

She said JIgawa state is among the beneficiary of the 3.1 million vaccines from the UNICEF.

Ms Manduate appealed to the governor to be part of their advocacy team in northern states, as she promised to provide more technical assistance through training of Jigawa health workers.

According to the country Director, despite effort made by Jigawa government to fight five child killer diseases there are numerious challenges on the high number of malnourished children in the state.

She maintained that, most of the Diphtheria victims are unimmunized children with zero dose record, adding that UNICEF will continue collaborate with the government to improve nutrition and reduce the number of out of schools children.

In his response, the JIgawa state governor Malam Umar Namadi lauded UNICEF, saying that their interventions are yielding fruitful result in almost all the critical sectors in Jigawa.

Governor Namadi promised to timeously release counterpart funds to UNICEF, indicating that the state government has gone far on it’s plan to involve Almajiri system into formal education system, to reduce the number of out of school children.

He commended the UNICEF team for visiting Jigawa and promised that he is opened for more collaboration to save and improve the lives of children in the state.