According to the latest report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), COVID-19 crisis has limited access to child immunization services for some households in Nigeria.
NBS in its report titled “COVID-19 impact monitoring round 3, July 2020 said that around 64% of households with children aged 0-5 years needed or were due to have their child immunized since the start of the coronavirus crisis in mid-March.
However, 13% those households whose children needed immunizations (households with children aged 0-5 years) were not able to get their children vaccinated.
According to the report, the major constraints faced by these households in getting their children vaccinated were a lack of available medical personnel (44% of such households) and movement restrictions imposed by the lockdown measures (24% of such households).
Child immunization is important in preventing outbreak of infectious diseases and ensuring the overall health of the society. This shortfall in child immunizations could lead to other health risks and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.
The report was based on the findings of the third round of Nigeria COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey conducted by NBS, with support from the world bank between July 2 and July 16.
Nigeria has reported 52,800 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 39,964 recoveries and 1,007 deaths. However, there are concerns that the actual number of cases in Nigeria is highly under-reported, due to lack of adequate testing.
Only 383,130 samples have been tested for COVID-19 in Nigeria since the beginning of the outbreak, in a population of over 200 million people, whereas countries like Bahrain with a population of about 1.6 million people has conducted 1.059 million tests.
Written by;
Ifunanya Ikueze
