Ekiti partners UNICEF to fight HPV, childhood diseases
The Ekiti State Government has restated its commitment to partner the United Nations Children’s Fund to fight the Human Papilloma Virus and preventable childhood diseases, as well as ensuring the sound health of residents.
The state Commissioner for Information, Taiwo Olatunbosun, spoke at Ikere Ekiti on Thursday, during a one-day media advocacy dialogue to increase trust and uptake of HPV vaccine organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Ekiti State Ministry of Information.
The advocacy meeting is ahead of another round of HPV vaccination for girls between ages one nine and 14, and the routine immunisation for children beginning in the state on Saturday.
The commissioner, represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Sesan Alabi, who said health specialists had described HPV “as the most frequent cause of cervical cancer deaths among women,” hailed the vaccine development to combat the virus.
UNICEF Social and Behavioural Change Specialist, Mrs Aderonke Akinola-Akinwole, said, “Our focus today is on HPV, but we are leveraging on this to talk about other childhood vaccines which will form the basis on the Non-Polio Supplemental Immunisation Activity campaigns that will be done in Ekiti State this weekend.
“We will be giving our regular routine immunisation vaccination, which is for children from 0-2 years; we will be giving the measles vaccine which is for nine months to five years and the HPV vaccine for girls from nine years to 14 years.
“Vaccines are safe, free and effective. Allowing our children get vaccinated against vaccine-preventable childhood diseases is a wise decision that every parent should make for his or her child.
“This meeting is an advocacy meeting with media practitioners leveraging on their platforms and their network to help us increase vaccine trust and uptake particularly with childhood vaccines.”
The UNICEF official stressed the significance of promoting public awareness, saying, “Everybody must be seen as promoting and advocating for the uptake of childhood vaccines so that children do not die or become deformed as a result of diseases that can be prevented,”
