Abuja, 24 June 2015 - The Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the Governor of Yobe State on health, Dr Bello Kawuwa has lauded the effort made by the teams engaged by the World Health Organization (WHO) Hard-to-Reach project towards reaching children and women in areas with difficult terrains, including populations in security compromised areas of the state.

Dr Kawuwa acknowledged that “with the enormous support received from donors, it is pertinent that the primary care board strives to harmonize the support to optimally strengthen the system for effective health care delivery and posterity” during an advocacy visit by the WHO focal person for the project, Dr Samuel Bawa, to his office in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital on 21 June, 2015.

 In addition, he directed the primary health care board to include the hard-to-reach approach into their work plan and fiscal budget for the year 2016 for approval by government. He further thanked WHO for providing technical support for not only immunization activities but more interventions that would further improve the wellbeing of children and women in  the state.

The WHO focal person for the project had earlier presented the hard- to- reach score card to the SSA and other government officials which recorded that by the third quarter of implementation (July 2014-March 2015), under 1 year old children received 9,935 oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses, 8,116 with pentavalent vaccine doses, while 95,140 under 5 years old children were vaccinated with   trivalent OPV.  The report further revealed that the project administered 90, 836 doses of Vitamin A and 99,820 deworming tablets to children under 5 years. Furthermore, 13,574 pregnant women were given TT2+, 19,437 got iron sulphate and 12,084 received malaria preventive therapy during pregnancy.

With the above mentioned achievements, the focal person urged the government of Yobe State to do more to match the effort of partners in strengthening the health system and improving access to health care services for sustainability of the hard-to- reach approach by the state after the completion of the  project.

Dr Bawa noted that the teams engaged by the project defied all odds of poor terrain and insecurity in Yobe to contribute towards improving access to child survival and maternal health interventions to the hardest to reach areas of the state due to the interest developed by the teams in embracing the approach.

The hard-to -reach project is implemented with technical support of WHO and financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in four states that are very high risk for polio transmission. The project engaged 65 mobile health teams who have been providing quarterly vaccination sessions and treatment of minor illnesses in pre-selected hard to reach settlements since July 2014 and expected to end in December 2015.

Other government functionaries present during the advocacy meeting included the Permanent Secretary, Director of Primary Healthcare Development Board, the desk officer of the hard to reach project and other officials of the state ministry of health.

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For more information, please contact:

Technical contacts:

Dr Pascal Mkanda; Tel: +234 803 402 2140; Email: mkandap [at] who.int
Dr Samuel Bawa; Tel: +234 810 221 0195; Email: bawasa [at] who.int
Media contact:

Ms Charity Warigon; Tel: +234 810 221 0093; Email: warigonc [at] who.int
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Below:

01. The SSA to Yobe State Governor and other officials of the SMOH, listening to the presentation by the WHO hard to reach focal person.

02. Child receiving OPV   during hard-to-reach mobile session