Diphtheria Outbreak: UNICEF Donates N3.1million Vaccines to Jigawa

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has donated 3.1 million Diphtheria vaccines as part of the organization’s response to Diphtheria outbreak in Nigeria.

This was disclosed by the UNICEF Country Director, Ms Christian Manduate, while speaking during a courtesy visit to the JIgawa State governor, Malam Umar Namadi Danmodi at the Government House, Dutse.

The country promised a continuation with interventions and technical support for the improvement of education, healthcare, birth and death registration in the state.

According to her, other areas of its intervention included child nutrition and other aspects of economic and human capital development.

Ms Christian Manduate commended Governor Namadi for achieving milestones on child protection and development in the state.

She said JIgawa State was among the beneficiaries of the 3.1 million vaccines from UNICEF.

Ms Manduate appealed to the governor to be part of their advocate team in northern states, promising to provide more technical assistance through training of Jigawa health workers.

According to UNICEF Country Director, despite effort made by Jigawa government to fight five child killer diseases, there was still a lot of challenges on the high number of malnourished children in the state.

She maintained that most of the Diphtheria victims were unimmunized children with zero dose record, adding that UNICEF would continue collaborating with government to improve nutrition and reduce number of out-of-school children.

In his response, the JIgawa State governor Malam Umar Namadi lauded UNICEF, saying their interventions was yielding a fruitful result in almost all the critical sectors in Jigawa.

Governor Namadi, who assured timely releases of counterpart funds to UNICEF, said the state government had gone far on its plan to involve Almajiri system into formal education system, with the aim to reduce out-of-school children.

He then commended UNICEF team for visiting Jigawa and assured more collaboration to save and improve the lives of children in the state.