A Senior Programme Officer at the Gates Foundation, Dr Saad Abdulmumin, says Nigeria accounts for 30 per cent of Africa’s zero-dose children, describing the figure as a national emergency requiring urgent action. Abdulmumin said this on Friday in Abuja, at the Her Health, Her Power Conference Africa, organised by the VickyHeldan Empowerment Foundation.
He said Africa currently hosts about seven million children who have not received their first dose of the pentavalent vaccine, with Nigeria accounting for more than two million of that number. “Nigeria is the global capital of zero-dose children. That is really putting Nigeria in a very difficult situation in the country and also in the global community,” he said.
The health officer said the country needed tailored, context-specific interventions, noting that health challenges in the North-West differed significantly from those in the South. He called for stronger community engagement, urging that traditional and religious leaders be brought into immunisation drives to build public confidence in vaccines. Abdulmumin also stressed the need for sustainable financing, warning that Nigeria risked catastrophic disease outbreaks if it did not urgently address vaccine supply gaps.
The figure is staggering. Two million children in Nigeria have not received their first dose of the pentavalent vaccine. That is a monumental failure of public health policy. The warning of catastrophic disease outbreaks is not hyperbole; it is a prediction.
This echoes the 2018 polio eradication challenges, when Nigeria also struggled to vaccinate its children. The mechanism was different then, but the result was the same: a failure to reach the most vulnerable children.
The winners: none. The losers: the two million children who have not been vaccinated; and the Nigerian health system, which has failed to reach them.
Bottom Line: Two million Nigerian children have not received their first vaccine. That is not a statistic. That is a crisis. The question is whether the government will act before it is too late.