The United States Agency for International Development(USAID) has allocated over $5million additional funds for the promotion of acceptance and uptake of the COVID-19 Vaccines in Nigeria.
This was revealed at the Breakthrough Action Nigeria’s Work Plan Development Workshop for the fiscal year 2023 by the organization’s Deputy Project Director, Risk Communication, Olayinka Umar-Farouk yesterday.
USAID said in a statement made available to the media that the funding would enable the organization refine its approaches and address vaccine hesitancy across different states in Nigeria, with key focus on people living with HIV and AIDS, health care workers and persons with co-mobidity illnesses.
Breakthrough Action Nigeria has been funded by USAID since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 to support risk communication and
community engagement efforts in Nigeria.
It further stated that the additional funding would bs in furtherance of the government’s efforts to attain 70% vaccination coverage of all eligible adults by September 2022.
It said that Breakthrough Action Nigeria has
So far reached 741,791 persons with COVID-19 messages via mass vaccination activities between November 2021 – March 2022 across FCT, Oyo, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Bauchi, Sokoto, Bayelsa and Kano
states with 415,376 persons vaccinated through these activities.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, COVID-19 has affected a total number of 256,415 persons in the country, causing the death of 3,144 persons.
However, 250,147 lives have been saved, having been treated and discharged from different health facilities across the nation.
