A Non-governmental Organisation, Rotary Club International, has urged the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to use the 2018 budget to end polio ravaging Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) across the country.
The call was made Thursday by the District Governor of the club, Nnoka Mbanefo, in Jos, while commissioning two Bus Terminal Shelters, constructed by Rotary Club of Jos Central, as part of campaign to end polio and to ease hardship among the less privileged in Plateau State.
Mbanefo said: “The Federal Government should use the 2018 budget and address issues of decline in immunization coverage at the Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) camps in the North to end polio in Nigeria in 2018.
“Rotary in collaboration with World Head Organisation (WHO), has dispatched fresh team of vaccinators to IDPs camps in Maiduguri and other parts of the north to ensure all Children from 0-5 years are immunize to kick polio out of the country.
“Nigeria was deprived of being delisted among polio endemic countries of the world because of some few cases recorded in Borno State in 2016 and i was worried over the unhealthy development.
I want Federal Government to use the 2018 budget to tackle poliomyelitis by ensuring that children in IDPs camps and unaccessible areas in the north and other parts of the country are immunize.
“We have sent a team of vaccinators to all IDPs in the north to ensure that no child miss any round of immunization.
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Nigeria has lived for about two years now without any case of polio and we want government to maintain the track record by funding intensive campaign against the scourge disease in the 2018 budget.”
The Rotary Chief urge all rotarians in Nigeria to carry out similar projects that will ameliorate the suffering of children in line with the campaign against polio.
On his part, the President, Rotary Club of Jos Central, Chief Chinedu Okpenwa, said there were communities in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State who had refuse to bring out their children for immunization, adding that aggressive campaign is on to educate the parents on the need to end polio.
Kingsley Chukwuka, Jos
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