The federal government Monday said Nigerians must now take COVID- 19 vaccination as their civic responsibility to curb the spread of the disease.
“It is a civic responsibility and not just the protection of individuals,” Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, said at the launch of SCALES 3.0 strategy for accelerating integrated COVID-19, at the NAF Center, Abuja.
He added that there is need to scale up vaccination by deploying various strategies that would encourage Nigerians to be vaccinated.
He said 25 per cent vaccination of eligible Nigerians has been recorded and three out of 36 states have so far recorded over 50 per cent vaccination. The three states are Kano, Jigawa and Nasarawa states.
He stated further that the figure is a far cry from the 70 per cent targeted vaccination of Nigerians, adding that although the spread of the disease was caged there is a lot of work ahead to curb its spread.
The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, said as of August 8, 2022, the number of eligible persons who are fully vaccinated stands at 27, 703, 573, making the proportion of the total eligible population that have been vaccinated in Nigeria to be 25 per cent.
He stated further that: “SCALES 3.0 is an evidence- based update that fixes the bugs in SCALES 2.0 and human- centered demand generation design to address COVID-19 risk perception in the country.
“On the service delivery, SCALES 3.0 will operate on focused campaign mode with mobile and special teams, taking vaccine to where people live and work. These will address operational issues with the fixed posts, temporary fixed posts and mass vaccination sites that were observed in SCALES 2.0.”
Minister for Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, remarked that: “While we are glad that Nigeria is among high-performing countries in terms of COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Africa, we can’t but acknowledge the fact that we still have a lot of work to do as the statistics above has shown.”
