Benin, 31 August 2017-In an effort to reduce the unacceptably high measles disease incidence in Nigeria, the government with support from partners have planned to conduct a Measles follow up campaign targeting children 9-59 months old. To achieve high quality implementation, the campaign is planned to be conducted in phases between   October and November 2017 in the North-west and North-eastern states. For the North central, South-west, South-east and South-south zones of Nigeria, the exercise will be conducted during February-March, 2018.

According to coverage survey data, Nigeria achieved 84.5% during the 2015-2016 Measles vaccination campaign. The country recorded overall high measles incidence of >10 per million population in 2016.

For the 2017-2018 campaign, microplanning activities have already kick started with the zonal level training of trainers (TOT) conducted for all zones. For the South-east and South-south zones, the most recent TOT was conducted in Benin, Edo state on 28-30 August 2017.

In his remarks at the TOT workshop, the Chairman of the National Measles Technical Coordination Committee (NMTCC), Dr Joseph Oteri informed participants of the need for states to strategize using innovations to reach all eligible children with potent measles vaccine to achieve high quality vaccination coverage greater than 95%.  Dr Oteri shared some of innovative approaches that will be rolled out for the upcoming campaign which include the development of an accountability framework, use of the best estimate for operational targets, advocacy to Executive Governors through the Governors’, Forum for political support, house-to-house mobilization, phased implementation and real time monitoring to trigger timely response, among others.

Addressing participants at the TOT, the Edo state Permanent Secretary for Health, Dr Izielen Asogun highlighted the importance of robust training for microplanning as it will determine the quality of the planned campaign. He stated that Edo state government has keyed into the strategy of reducing the burden of measles through strengthening Primary healthcare services, community health insurance scheme for all and approval of the 10 million naira counterpart fund required for the measles campaign 2017-18. He charged participants from the southern states to replicate similar effort in their respective States to guarantee a quality measles campaign 2017-18 exercise”

Participants at the training included Immunization officers, cold chain officers, Health Educators, as well as zonal technical officers, NPHCDA and state level partners. The facilitators supporting the trainings were from the NMTCC members: WHO, UNICEF, AFENET, EU-SIGN, CHAI and IVAC. So far, 387 trainers have been trained countrywide to provide cascaded training for the ward level microplanning process for the 2017-18 Measles vaccination campaign.