Measles: FCTA targets 900,000 children for vaccination

The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has targeted 910,557 children aged 9-59 months for the 2017/2018 measles vaccination campaign.

The acting secretary of FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat, Mrs. Alice AchuOdey, stated this while briefing newsmen on Friday in preparation for the February 2018 measles vaccination campaign in Abuja.

She said the highly effective, safe and relatively inexpensive measles vaccine protects children from the infection and its widespread use can completely stop the spread of the virus.

She added that in the 2015 campaign, the national coverage was 84.5 percent whereas the FCT stood at 73.9 percent, which she said was not good enough to reduce the burden of the disease in the territory because of the daily influx of people into the FCT.

“The strategy we are going to adopt according to the national guidelines are fixed and temporary posts, special teams for the hard to reach communities such as riverine, nomadic settlements and IDP camps which will last for six days.

She said as at end of August 2017, FCT reported about 180 measles cases, 69 blood samples tested with 13 labs confirmed cases from four area councils of the FCT namely Kwali, AMAC, Gwagwalada, and Bwari while children below five years accounted for 46 percent of the confirmed cases in the FCT.