2018: Kano records significant success in polio eradication – UNICEF

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)   state team lead in Kano state, Farhat Mahdi, Thursday said the state made a significant progress in the area of polio eradication due to what he described as ‘high-level commitment’ on the part of relevant stakeholders including the state government, emirate council as well as UNICEF’s Volunteer Ward Supervisors (VWS) and Volunteer Community Mobilizers (VCM).

“We achieved a lot in the area of routine immunization, it’s worthy of note that this is due to high level of commitment from the Emirate Council and the State Government and also due to the hard work of UNICEF’s VWS and VCM in particular, we have saved lives [of children] in our state and I wish it will remain so and we are going to double our efforts in 2019,”  Mahdi said.

Mahdi was speaking in Kano during the annual quarterly capacity building meeting for UNICEF’s VWS and VCMs on routine immunization as well as presentation of the achievements, gaps and challenges recorded in 2018 on polio eradication in Kano state.

Volunteer Ward Supervisors (VWS) are the mid-level monitoring and information sharing resource persons that ensure the quality of implementation of RI services as well as timely submission of data obtained from In the field while Volunteer Community Mobilizers (VCM) work as frontline community-level mobilizers conducting house-to- house mobilization and sensitization to influence health seeking behaviors towards improving the health of infant children and their caregivers.

In the last one year, Kano state has recorded a significant progress in RI coverage which rose from barely 16 percent to 78 percent, thanks to the intervention of development partners, the state government, and especially  the Emir of Kano Malam Muhammadu Sanusi II, through the Kano State Emirate Committee on Health and Human Development (KECCoHD).