Renew efforts to reach every child with immunization - First Lady urges African countries
The First Lady and President of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA), Mrs Lordina Mahama, has urged all African member states to renew their efforts to reach every child with routine immunisation and to improve child health outcomes.
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In a speech read on her behalf at the launch of this year’s African Immunisation and Child Health Promotion Week celebrations in Accra, the First Lady said vaccination could save children’s lives, and keep adults, communities and nations healthy, as well as safeguard families from the cycle of poverty by increasing their resilience to diseases.
Preventable diseases
The African Vaccination Week (AVW) is commemorated annually with the aim of strengthening immunisation programmes in the Africa region by increasing public awareness of the importance of every person’s need and right to be protected from vaccine-preventable diseases.
This year’s theme for the vaccination is “Close the Immunisation Gap: Stay Polio Free while the theme for the Child Health Is “Good Life: Start Right”.
She said both themes highlighted the importance of a collaborative effort by all stakeholders, the government, partners, civil society, individuals, families and communities at large, to ensure that children were born healthy and protected against unnecessary death from diseases that could be prevented.
Disabilities and deficiencies
Mrs Mahama said giving the children the right start in every aspect of their lives increased their potential for healthy growth and development and they were spared disabilities and deficiencies that could prevent them from attaining their full potential as productive citizens.
The President of OAFLA urged fellow first ladies to lobby their governments, benevolent organisations, international non-governmental organisations, as well as corporate Africa, to ensure that they finished the business of child health, as partnership was paramount to the work of OAFLA.
“According to the WHO, one in five African children still lack access to all the necessary and basic vaccinations. Although 18 countries in Africa are already reaching 90 per cent or more children with the required three doses of DTP3, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, the majority are still struggling with low immunisation rates,” she said.
Preventable diseases
Mrs Mahama noted that Ghana was the first African country to introduce pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines at the same time, simultaneously tackling the leading causes of the world’s two biggest childhood killers – pneumonia and diarrhoea. “We must keep up the momentum. So, make sure you get your children vaccinated during this AVW2016 and make Ghana healthy and strong,” she added.
She said Ghana’s journey had not been an easy one and it had taken great sacrifice by the health personnel, commitment by all policy makers and stakeholders; strong collaboration with health partners including the GAVI Alliance, UNICEF, World Health Organization, Rotary International, JICA and recently the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Current vaccination
The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, said the current vaccination programme offered protection against more than 10 dangerous childhood illnesses and added that since 2002, Ghana had not recorded any deaths from measles, no case of wild polio virus since 2008 and neonatal tetanus had also been eliminated from the country since 2011.
Those successes, he said, could be attributed to improvements in routine immunisation services, disease surveillance and successful national immunisation days.
The Programme Manager of Expanded on Immunisation, Dr George Bonsu, said immunisation was widely recognised as one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions ever introduced and apart from provision of clean water, immunisation against vaccine-preventable diseases had saved more lives than any other public health intervention.
