A quarterly review meeting for the members of the community of practice (COP) on immunization budget tracking, Accountability and sustainability targeting zero dose children and missed communities was conducted in the state.
In his welcome remarks, The project manager SERICC Kano state primary health care management board, Mallam Awwal Idris appreciated the commitment of cop members in seeing that targeted children in the community are immunized as no eligible child should miss the routine immunization.
He said the cop members should make judicious use of the opportunity given to them to gain insightful knowledge of what they will learn in the course of the event.
On his part the National co-ordinator AHBN, Hon Muhammad Usman lamented on the decrease of immunization budget of 2025 which he said has a negative implication to the lives of children under five if not quickly addressed.
He said that this year’s allocation on immunization was five hundred and twenty – eight million naira as against next year budget which is three hundred and thirteen million naira.
Hon Usman said that health budget is very critical as he call on the legislatives and the Executive arm of the government to have a rethink in the increase of immunization allocation to the Kano state.
“ Is really not a good thing because the zero dose issue is a disturbing issue in Kano, Kano has a very high population and fifteen local government areas are zero dose our concentration as cop members in this LGAs is that reduction can have a negative consequences on the State hon usman said”.
“CSOs, all relevant partners should come together to further advocate to the Kano state house of Assembly to look at this budget to bring back the figures of 2024 as against the reduction proposed by the state he added.”
While making his presentation the focal person AHBN, Dr Musa Muhammad Bello said that the essence of the review meeting was to inform the community of practice members about the progress towards the implementation of the work plan, to enhance the capacity of the cop members on advocacy and accountability skills for targeted stakeholders for immunization financing and budget aimed at reaching the zero dose children missed communities, to review and update the six month action plan for the community of practice and to support the cop members to develop scorecard for advocacy and accountability.
Dr Musa said that Kano state contributes the largest number of children in Nigeria, way back in 2021 a study was conducted all over the country out of the seven hundred and seventy four LGAs in Nigeria there were one hundred LGAs that has the highest burden of unimmunized children as Kano state has fifteen out of the forty – four LGAs with the highest burden in the country compared to other states.
“We need more funding to address immunization issues in order to address this childhood killer diseases in the community especially population of Kano with the population of under one year old children that are unimmunized, we need a lot of government funding and support to address the issues Dr Musa said”.
Dr Musa however said that the reduction of the immunization funds can impact negatively in terms of logistics for providing the vaccines which requires transporting the vaccines to various facilities and having a functional cold chain system to store the vaccines.
“So if reduce the amount of funding that is needed for immunization you are ultimately reducing the costs of logistics, transporting the vaccines, the money needed to sustain the cold chain facilities to provide immunization means more children will not have access to immunization as a result number of zero dose children will increase and there will likely be an epidemic of childhood killer diseases as we have witness recently in terms of diphtheria, meseales and many other diseases and more children may die Dr Musa stressed”.
