As the 2 weeks campaign for the vaccination against Human Papillomavirus (HPV) ends tomorrow, not fewer than 400,000 girls between the ages of 9 and 14 are to be vaccinated in Bauchi state.
The disclosure was made by the Health Specialist, UNICEF Bauchi Field Office, Dr Emmmanuel Emedo while speaking to Journalists on the exercise.
He explained that, “This vaccine is going to protect the girls against cervical cancer when they get to the reproductive age. It is therefore very important that they are allowed to receive the vaccine.”
According to him, “We are actually monitoring the campaign across all the 20 Local Government Areas of Bauchi state and we have personnel that monitoring. This includes personnel from the state government, UNICEF, World Health Organisation and all other partners in the field.”
He stressed that, “More importantly, we have personnel from the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) that are supporting the exercise on the field. The exercise is going on smoothly.”
Emmanuel Emedo added that, “The reports we are getting is that, there is impressive turnout across the entire state and this has to do with the level of preparedness. We had series of engagements before the launching of the campaign.”
According to him, “We anticipated, given the context of where we are working that we needed to prepare adequately by collaborating with all the relevant stakeholders, more importantly the parents and caregivers at home, the schools where we finds the girls within the age group.”
“We prepared them by informing them adequately about the vaccine. We have had about three weeks of preparation, so, we are not surprised that we are getting massive turnout,” he added.
He also said that, “More importantly, we have engaged the Youths themselves to pass the information, educate their peers and to mobilise them for the campaign.”
The UNICEF Health Specialist added that, “We equally used mothers. In Bauchi state, we have what we call Mama2Mama support group which are women in their various communities who have been vigorously trained by UNICEF and used to mobilise their peers, children and all population for health services.”
According to him, “We have a total of 6,450 women across the 323 Wards in Bauchi state who have been engaged for mobilisation of girls for this particular campaign.”
He also said that, “We are working with the traditional rulers and religious leaders to reach households and to convince people to understand the importance of this vaccine.”
On the refusal of some parents not to allow their girl children to take the vaccine, he said that there are Committees set at all the Wards across the state saddled with the responsibilities of reviewing the exercise on a daily basis and take steps to resolve all issues relating to non compliance.
Meanwhile, a group of community volunteers engaged for the effective mobilization for the success of the ongoing HPV vaccination campaign in Toro LGA of Bauchi State have expressed satisfaction with the response of parents.
Balkisu Hussein Lame who is a member of Mama2mama volunteer group in Toro LGA while speaking to Journalists on Sunday said that the exercise was going on smoothly and the turnout was encouraging.
According to her, “We were trained by the UNICEF on how to go about mobilizing people particularly women parents for the exercise. We have been going from house to house to talk to parents about the HPV vaccination. There has been great response from the people.”
She added that, “because have been engaged in previous exercises, this one was not a problem to us. We used what we were taught during the capacity building training and it has been a huge success.”
Balkisu Hussein Lame who gave a vivid understanding of the negative effect of HPV, stressed the importance of taking the vaccine by girts aged 9 – 14 so that in future when they reach reproductive period, it will be easy for them.
She then called on the concerned authorities to look into their remuneration considering the economic situation of the country stressing that going from house to house and community to community is not an easy thing.
Also speaking, a Volunteer Community Mobilizer (VCM), Zainab Mohammed Bello said that the mobilization was not stressful as parents responded positively to the exercise.
Zainab Mohammed Bello said that the various capacity building trainings they have received from UNICEF and other organisations came handy during the mobilization for the HPV vaccination campaign in Toro LGA.
She added that all the mobilization technique they got were applied which made speaking to parents particularly women, easy to their understanding saying that the response has been very tremendous.
All other community mobilisers who spoke on the exercise commended the positive response of parents to the HPV vaccination exercise unlike in previous exercises expressing confidence that the target in the LGA will be met and even surpassed.
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