Candido warns traditional rulers over polio immunisation

The Chairman of Abuja Municipal Area Council AMAC, Abdullahi Adamu Candido, has vowed to punish traditional rulers that fail to present children in their domains for polio immunisation.

He warned district heads that he would not hesitate to apply punitive measures where they failed to supervise and ensure that children were brought for vaccination in their wards and called on parents to bring their under five years children forward for the polio immunization.

The chairman, who made the call at the flag-off of the January 2018 Sub National Immunisation Plus Days on Friday in Jiwa district of the FCT, said census figures of various communities like Jiwa were based on the population of 2000-2006 which was before the demolition exercise in the territory.

He called on the relevant authorities to ensure that communities in the FCT were accurately assessed in terms of health needs requirements like polio vaccination.

Candido said after the el-Rufai demolition, the population of many communities reduced drastically while health care providers did not take that into cognizance in making estimates for health care services and called for proper adjustment where necessary.

The Executive Secretary, FCT Primary Health Care Development Board, FCT PHCDB, Dr. Mathew Ashikeni, in his remarks, said, “Polio vaccines have been procured for the over 900,000 targeted under-5 years population whereby special teams will be going house-tohouse to conduct the exercise.”

He further revealed that a measles vaccination exercise would be conducted in the FCT February 8-20.