*Say’s I watched my 4 children die becs we didn’t believe in vaccines
By Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
In an isolated village in a community of Ungwan Kanawa in Dutsen-Abba ward in Zaria LGA of Kaduna State, a house wife, Haj. Saude Safiyanu narrates a tragic incident of her child’s dead awaiting vaccination they had resisted.
Haj. Safiyanu, along with other women, while sitting at the village square and eagerly waiting for vaccination officers to arrive with the State Mobile Health Clinic Truck, star at her youngest daughter playing and exited with the waiting crowd.
One could imagine the mix of joy and pain in her heart remembering what she had gone through losing four children as a result of her husband’s resistance to vaccination for their children.
Haj. Saude Safiyanu and her vaccinated 20 months old baby,, Saude would have become a mother of six if her husband had allowed her to vaccinate their children, but today, she left with two children.
“We never vaccinated our children. My husband didn’t believe in it. Many men here didn’t. We thought vaccines were dangerous,” Saude says softly, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Ungwan Kanawa community, has received vaccination campaigns with suspicion. Misconceptions spread from home to home that vaccines would harm children, or that they were part of some unknown plot”, said an insider.
Records has shown that Ungwan Kanawa Community has 100% resistance to vaccination, according to health authority in the State.
“Saude never had the courage to question it. Her husband forbade the trips to the health center and even rejecting the house to house vaccination, and like many women in the community. But then, the sicknesses struck.
One by one, her children fell ill tiny bodies wracked with fever, cough, rashes, and breathless cries that would haunt her long after the silence that followed.
“I lost four of them,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “After the first child, every one after got sick. I didn’t know what to do. We prayed. We gave herbs. We stayed home. And then they died.”
It was only after the death of her fourth child that Saude found the courage to confront the beliefs she had grown up with. She begged her husband to allow their newest baby, a girl, to receive immunizations. This time, broken by grief, he agreed.
Today, that little girl is 20 months old healthy, laughing, and full of life.
“She runs around and plays all day,” Saude smiles. “I thank God every day that she is healthy. If only I had known earlier.”
“The tragedy in Saude’s home is not an isolated case. According to the Village Head of Ungwan Kanawa, Nasiru Yunusa, the community recently lost about five children to measles alone. Many more are still sick at home.
“Some women with their children waiting for vaccination officers at Ungwan Kanawa Community.
“Two-thirds of our people once rejected vaccines,” the Village Head admits. “But now, after seeing so many children die, minds are changing.”
Beyond the vaccine skepticism, the community faces another challenge: distance. The nearest health center is seven kilometers away, a tough journey for mothers carrying newborns or sick children.
“We have no clinic here, Women are forced to deliver at home. Emergencies become tragedies,” Yunusa said.
Still, there is hope. A new sense of urgency is rising among the people of Ungwan Kanawa. Saude is now one of the most vocal advocates for immunization in her village, urging other mothers not to repeat her mistakes.
“Don’t wait until you lose your children like I did,” she pleads. “Vaccinate them. Save them.”
Her words carry heavy weight of experience and the fragile hope that no other mother in her village will have to bury a child because of fear and misinformation.
