The Unsung Heroes of Nigeria’s Vaccination Efforts

In 2013, I was fortunate enough to go to Nigeria with a team of 10 Rotary members led by Ann Lee Hussey, a polio survivor and advocate for polio eradication efforts. We spent most of our week visiting small medical centers in the Kaduna State.

The purpose of our visit was to learn about the strides Nigeria was making to become the next endemic country to be declared polio-free.We experienced “a day in the life of a healthcare worker” and as such, we were on the road at 6:30 a.m. every morning (often with no power in the hotels so flash lights were essential).

For the monthly immunization clinics, vaccines (not just for polio) are delivered to the health stations very early and are distributed into small coolers to be picked up by the health care workers by 7 a.m. Many of the healthcare workers are young mothers who carry their own babies on their backs to help dispel the myth of vaccine poisoning. We would leave together, sometimes by foot, to rural areas that were sometimes more than an hour away.

The vaccination site was anything from an old vegetable cart or an empty shack, but when we arrived we would go out with the loud speaker to announce that we were on-site. The healthcare workers would line up the children as they arrived, and we would give the polio drops to any children who were five years and younger. We would record the number of vaccinated children each day.

We delivered vaccines to children but I felt as though our main job was to give thanks to the mothers for vaccinating their children, to healthcare workers for their dedication and to the religious and community leaders for supporting immunizations in their village.

The system in Nigeria is working because of the dedication of the healthcare workers – the unsung heroes of the system. These people go out despite the danger, because they are passionate about stopping vaccine-preventable diseases from affecting more children.

The good news is that the groundwork in place for the polio immunizations are not just helping with polio eradication efforts, but also for administering other essential vaccines and healthcare. Nigeria has not had a new case of polio since July 2014. While this has been a lengthy process (since 1985), I find great joy in seeing that the immunization strategies will continue to do much more good for disease prevention, even after Nigeria is polio-free.