Community leader criticises bribe-for-immunisation policy in the north

A community leader and ante-natal and postnatal healthcare advocate in Jigawa State,  Alhaji Adamu Aliyu Kiyawa, has criticised the policy of inducing parents with gifts to accept routine immunisation in the North.

Aliyu, who is the district head of Kiyawa and a member of the Routine Immunisation Committee of Kiyawa Local Government Area, made the observation during a town hall meeting in his palace as part of the 2021 International Pneumonia Day celebration organised by the Save the Children International (SCI).

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The comment came against the backdrop of the reports of a decline in the figure of child mortality on pneumonia from 12.3 per cent to 3.9 per cent in Jigawa State.

Kiyawa, a former commissioner in Jigawa State, said, “This action by the government made the public and parents, in particular, to see and consider the health of their children as important to government not them as parents.”

Speaking earlier, the manager of Kiyawa Local Government Primary Healthcare, Malam Musa Muhammadu, said pneumonia prevalence had drastically reduced in the local government following the intervention of Save the Children International (SCI) with the introduction of the INSPIRING project sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and supporting the PHC department and health facilities in the area with medical equipment worth more than N50 million.