14th April, 2014
Eromosele Ebhomele
Nigeria accounts for 3.8 million of the estimated 22.6 million unimmunised children against polio living in different countries of the world, the United Nation’s International Children’s Emergency Fund, UNICEF, has said.
Seventy percent of the estimated 22.6 million unimmunised children live in just 12 countries with Nigeria having the second highest figure after India, which has 9.6 million unimmunised children.
Indonesia and Ethiopia came third and fourth with a total of 1.7 million and 1.1 million unimmunised children respectively.
This followed by Pakistan and Democratic Republic of Congo with 0.8 million and 0.7 million children respectively.
Uganda, Chad and Afghanistan have 0.3 million each, Kenya, Somalia and Mozambique have 0.2 million each.
The rest of the world, according to UNICEF, shares the remaining 30 percent of unimmunised children.
Some medical experts and analysts believe that the persistence of the disease in Nigeria is due to some factors including ignorance of the disease, wrong information passed by those who should know more about it and insecurity in the northern part of the country.
For example, some immunisation officials were killed while they administered the vaccines to children in a northern state last year.
The Lions Club had also earlier this year lamented that insecurity was a major challenge to the fight against polio attacks on children in Nigeria.
The club announced that it was mobilising to go round the country to assist in the fight against the health challenge.
Also, some state government had sometimes been accused of running out of vaccines especially that of polio.