Lagos State, starting from Thursday, 15th March to 29th March 2018 engaged in immunization of children under the ages of nine months to five years across the state against measles.

The campaign which according to the state will be different from previous ones will be targeting 95 per cent coverage to ensure total eradication of the disease in the state.

Declaring open, a one day Media Orientation for journalists in Lagos, the Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Healthcare Board, Dr Iyabo Are said, the 95 per cent coverage target became necessary to stamp out measles epidemic in the state.
“Our aim for this campaign is to have 95 per cent coverage, success story, that we have vaccinated about 95 per cent of our children, so to get this percentage because we have having measles campaign in the past but we haven’t achieve that percentage.

As you know measles is a killer and it comes out on and on with sporadic epidemics, because we have not succeeded in completely immunizing our children to attend 95 per cent. The 95 per cent is not the perfect but that is what we are aiming at”, She said.

Presenting an overview of 2017/2018 measles follow up at the event, the Immunization Specialist UNICEF, Dr Charles Nwosisi pointed out that the campaign this time around was set to achieve optimal coverage to the tune 95 per cent which will ensure that all children from ages of nine months to five years which accounted for 3.6 million of the state population were immunized. ” We want to do something different from others campaigns this year”, assured.

2017 coverage, according to Nwosisi was 84 per cent which he insisted was not good enough, thus attributing it to lack of awareness among others.
Consequently, he called on the media to ensure proper dissemination and education of the public.

The vaccines according to Nwosisi are safe and free adding that anybody caught selling them should be immediately reported to the law enforcement agents even as urged the public not to patronize anyone selling the vaccines.

Earlier in her presentation, the Group Head of National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) and the State Social Mobilization Worker, Mrs Modupe Owojuyigbe described the media as critical to the success implementation of health campaign in general the 2017/2018 measles campaign in particular.