Sokoto State Government has in the last one year paid 400 million naira as its counterpart funding for immunisation programme in addition to increasing health facilities that offer routine immunisation against polio from 553 to 597.
Making the disclosure, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Ali Inname, said the counterpart funding was for immunisation programme in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Dangote Foundation (DF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Speaking on this development, the state governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, stressed that his administration has recorded huge successes in the health sector as evident in “the reduction in the number of circulating vaccine derived polio virus (cVDPV) identified in 2019.
Tambuwal listed other achievements by the state government as consistent monthly meetings on polio eradication, immunisation of 55 percent sampled children and conduct of state data quality assessment in 23 local government areas,  the governor assured that the state’s “health team will continue to work to intensify strategies to eradicate the occurrence of cVDPV in the coming months.”
The governor also noted that the observations by various partners in the meeting, including BMGF, DF, USAID, and the UNICEF; would be given necessary adjustments and improvements would be made to address the gaps.
In his remarks via Skype, the Chairman of the BMGF, Mr. Bill Gates, urged the state government to follow up on local government counterpart funding and ensure that the transition from Routine Immunization Memorandum of Understanding (RIMoU) to Primary Healthcare Memorandum of Understanding (PHC MoU), should surmount all difficulties earlier experienced.
Also speaking via Skype, Mr. Gates, who was represented at the meeting by Mr. Chris Elias, called on the state government to address human resources challenges, just as he advised the state ministry of health to evolve a multi-strategy to address problems identified during the meeting.
On his part, Chairman of the Dangote Foundation, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, who also featured at the meeting via Skype, while commending the state government for its efforts to engage traditional rulers and other stakeholders in the campaign against polio, noted that there are some problems mitigating against the health tracking system and encouraged the state government to meet all demands.
According to a statement by Muhammad Bello, the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to Tambuwal, Dangote also recommended that the government should expand its financial monitoring framework, implement sanction on defaulters of the contributory health scheme.
