GAVI – The Vaccine Alliance is donating $50 million to eight states to reduce deaths of children from vaccine-preventable diseases and further strengthen the primary health care (PHC) system across the country.
The beneficiaries of the grants for this year are State Primary Health Care Development Agencies/Boards (SPHCDA/SPHCDB) of Bayelsa, Gombe, Jigawa, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Taraba, and Zamfara.
These States will be receiving funds from Gavi with an implementation period from this year to 2024.
The Senior Manager of Health Systems Strengthening (HSS) for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Ali Mohammed spoke during the second Biannual Partners Review Meeting on the PHC Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), organized by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF).
He announced that the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the NGF will provide oversight and technical support to the states to ensure that they utilize the funds well.
Mohammed said: “This whole program was started in 2019. The idea was obviously to strengthen health systems, particularly at the sub-national level. As you know, GAVI is mandated with the task of immunization globally. Nigeria is one of those countries with the highest level of under and unimmunized children in the world. So, Nigeria is a very much focused country for us.
“But Gavi’s initiative and what was unique about this partnership was the sub-national engagement. Most times, a lot of the work we do is with countries. However, when you want to reach what we call ‘zero-dose children’, that is, children who have never been immunized, you need to work with some of the most crucial partners that are located sub-nationally.
“And so, we decided to pilot, as I will say, this engagement by working with eight of our most crucial states where we thought performance, in terms of immunization, was lowest. So, that was what came to be. There were also states where there had not been that much partner presence compared to other states.”
