At least two million caregivers from Northeast and Northwest regions of the country have received cash incentives amounting to N4,752,714,560 between January and September 2023 from the New Incentives – All Babies Are Equal (NI-ABAE).
The Operations Coordinator, New Incentives, Mubarak Muhammad Bawa, made this known during a joint states stakeholders meeting held in Kano, noting that the initiative was aimed at promoting childhood vaccination rate in the country.
He said, “The project provides cash incentives to caregivers in northern Nigeria to increase childhood vaccination rates. When caregivers bring their infant in for routine immunisations, we provide a small cash incentive and information about the importance of vaccinations.
“The programme operates in government clinics in partnership with the state, local governments and immunisation partners. So far we have recorded 1,838,981 enrollments from 163 Local Government Areas covering 48,795 settlements and 5,240 clinics.
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“We also have recorded 346,521 disbursement sessions, 6,033,921 disbursements, 23,022,078 vaccines encouraged and an amount of N4,752,714,560 have so far been disbursed.”
Also speaking, the Kano State Routine Immunisation focal person, Mukhtar Rabiu Abubakar said, “At the state level, the programme has significantly improved the uptake of routine immunisation. Before our indices were very low in routine immunisation but now it is increasingly improving in all our facilities.”
Implementing and participating states are all states in the Northwest and Northeast regions of the country.