•Dangerous path laid by bad politics and poor vaccine penetration
THE World Health Organization (WHO) just rolled out a most troubling statistics — that Nigeria, with 3.3 million children, tops the list of the world’s most unvaccinated children against measles. This is a developmental nightmare, which must attract serious attention.
Following Nigeria, in that avoidable hall of health infamy, are India (2.9 million children), Pakistan (two million), Indonesia (1.2 million), Ethiopia (0.9 million) and Democratic Republic of Congo (0.7 million).
Inasmuch as the wide gap could be caused by sheer lack of vaccination penetration (because there is no sufficient money to fix public health or even enough infrastructure to take maximum advantage of the provision of vaccination exercises provided by WHO and other international donor agencies), part of it is caused by unthinking adults playing politics of spite.
In 2003, a Muslim lobby in Kano claimed that anti-polio vaccines, which WHO rolled out in six most polio-endemic states in northern Nigeria, were laced with anti-fertility drugs.
It was vicious propaganda to push for political shariah, notwithstanding that by WHO statistics, these poor Kano children, unvaccinated, stood the risk of being part of the 15 million children in West Africa WHO predicted might be down with polio.
Fourteen years later in 2017, a similar vicious propaganda boomed from the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) stable. Because some lobbies disagreed with Operation Python Dance 2, the riposte was to fuel the rumour that the accompanying military health outreach was laced with monkey pox dispensing poison!
So effective was this propaganda that it, in due course, spread to other states! The cost of that, on innocent children, ultimate victims of these adult vicious power plays, looms in the future.
We acknowledge though that part of the problem with the military outreach was its timing. Many believe that the military should have allowed the tension which attended Operation Python Dance 2 to die down before starting the outreach, to engender confidence among the civil populace who are the beneficiaries of the scheme.
All said, Nigeria must not only maximise opportunities of periodic vaccinations against polio, measles and other communicable diseases, it must play less politics, the result of which is endangering the future of innocent children.
The focus should be on the ongoing nationwide anti-measles vaccination. Though measles is a nationwide affair, from the WHO statistics, made available by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHDA), it is more endemic in the northern states.
Also, the Nigerian situation jars against the general trend in the world. Other parts of the world are experiencing a huge decline in measles-related deaths. That means less measles.
A key factor responsible for the salutary development is access to anti-measles jabs. Nigeria’s 3.3 million endangered children, therefore, are among the global clan of 20.8 million yet to get any dose of vaccination against the disease. Nigerian health authorities must work extra hard at stopping this trend.
But, apart from low vaccination penetration and bad politics, measles could also be a function of poverty: poor housing, resulting in poor ventilation, poor hygiene (the reality of most slums) and even combative ignorance, especially when religious institutions, for own selfish agenda, take advantage of ignorant folks and abuse their high sense of taboos to mislead them.
Poverty, basic hygiene, ignorance and better housing facilities across the board are areas the government must radically improve upon, to comprehensively tackle the measles menace.
All these however could fall within the purview of a strong and vibrant primary health policy, which operates from the dictum that prevention is better than cure. Primary health as prime public health policy was mainstreamed when the late Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti was health minister, under military President Ibrahim Babangida.
That such a cheaper approach to public health now appears mute as a national policy is an indictment of how extant governments change public policy, according to whims and caprices. That should change, as part of a comprehensive plan to erase the measles menace.
