Thursday, 18 August 2016

Polio: FG releses N9.8bn to immunise 56 children



  The Federal Government yesterday said it would release N9.8 billion for polio vaccines and other related activities, even as it unveiled plans to immunise over 56 million children by November 2016.


The N9.8 billion to be released is exclusive of the N6.5 billion approved by the Ministry of Finance when the polio crisis started.

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, who disclosed this at a briefing in Abuja, said the money would be used to execute the polio response plan developed by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, and its partners. Adewole, however, raised alarm that there was high risk of further spread of the virus due to population movement within and around the states.

 The response plan, according to the Minister, include five rounds of polio campaign, three of which will be focused on 16 northern states and two to be conducted nationwide.

  “When this crisis started, we approached the Minister of Finance for money, and I can assure you that N6.7 billion will be released from the 2016 budget. “Funding has actually never been an issue. The issue here has to do with access to this population.”

No comments:

Post a Comment