Kano Polio Immunization Reaches Over 46 Percent In 2018- Bill Gates

The Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Bill Gates, has appreciated the success stories emanating from Kano state, in terms of improvement in coverage across Primary Health Care indicators.

“Kano’s coverage for Penta 3 has improved from 19% in 2013 to 46% in the year 2018 but more needs to be done in terms of strengthening the Primary Health care system”, he said.

Although he noted that no case of Wild Polio Virus has been recorded in Kano since 2014, Mr. Gates highlighted “the critical need to strengthen key process components of Primary Health Care such as supply chain, to make the goal of total eradication of Polio achievable”.

Mr. Gates was speaking on Friday evening, during a video conference involving Kano state governor Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, Chairman of Dangote Foundation, Aliko Dangote and other stakeholders, on Kano State Health System Strengthening Program Review.

A statement issued by Director-General, Media and Communication to Kano State Governor, Ameen K. Yassar said Mr. Gates encouraged the state government to maintain sufficient and timely funding as well as better coordination of the anti-Polio program.

It said the chairman of Dangote Foundation, Alh. Aliko Dangote expressed satisfaction with the improvement recorded by the state government regarding data quality but stressed the need for the state health team “to work towards developing a robust data quality improvement plan before the end of the year”.

“This is targeted towards reducing the discrepancy administrative and survey data for all key health indices”, he maintained.

The statement said Gov. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje said, “despite the current challenges in the health system, we have continued putting the backbone structures which ensures that the ongoing MOU partnership is on course to deliver the expected results across various workstreams within the State Primary Health Care Management Board, Hospitals Services Management Board, and Drugs and Medical Consumables Supply Agency”.

“Since the last review, we have made remarkable progress beyond few programmatic areas of focus to additional scope in doing more around strengthening 2-way hospital referrals, maternal health and malaria program coordination”, the governor stressed.

According to him, “this is in addition to the already ongoing work of strengthening the existing areas of focus and consolidating gains made in operating our coordination platforms and the cross-agency linkage between the various MDAs under the State Ministry of Health”.

It noted that Dr. Ganduje promised that hospitals in the four newly created emirates in the state would be standardized with more beds spaces, as part of his administration’s goal to maintain the tempo in improving the quality of care for the primary health care services, sustain the quality integrated supportive supervision, and scale-up strengthening of 2-way referral linkages between primary and secondary health care facilities.

The statement added that the Emir of Rano, Alh. Tafida Abubakar Ila, who spoke on behalf of Kano State Emirate Council, promised to use the influence of the traditional leadership to ensure deeper oversight of health program activities at the grassroots level.