Health care workers in Nigeria are conducting door-to-door visits among local residents to ensure Nigerians have received their polio vaccinations, as health professionals believe this will manage the disease’s spread.
For many years, Nigeria has been responsible for approximately 50 percent of the world’s polio cases. This made it a significant priority for the nation to reduce its polio rates, which it has been striving to do for the last 20 years; as a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Nigeria as no longer endemic for polio.
Just two drops of the oral polio vaccine are all that people need to guarantee they are immunized. This is an important step in ensuring that the nation remains free of the virus.
A team of 100 trained Red Cross volunteers have traveled around the area to promote the vaccine. All children under 5 are encouraged to receive the oral polio vaccine to maintain the elimination of the virus.
“When we get to the household, the female volunteers enter the house and educate the women on the importance of polio vaccinations,” Bello Inuwa, a Red Cross volunteer from Dambatta East, said. “We count the under-5 children in the house, check their fingers and select the children whose fingers were not marked for vaccination.”
