No fewer than 3,000 communities in 17 local government areas of Niger State have no access to basic health and social facilities, an agency of the United Nations Children’s Fund, Hard to Reach, disclosed in Minna on Thursday.
The Programmes Manager of Hard to Reach, Dr. Muhammad Khalilu, said most of the children in these communities were suffering from “severe malnutrition” and other child killer diseases, while the pregnant women there also had no access to antenatal facilities and drugs.
Khalilu made this disclosure at a one day sensitisation meeting with journalists, adding that the only way to reach some of these communities habited by nomadic Fulanis was by motorcycles after several hours.
While describing the situation as “very serious”, Khalilu said most of the communities were also still attached “to their age long tradition and culture”, which had made it almost impossible for social workers to influence their decisions or change their beliefs.
He however said Hard to Reach has been able to penetrate 850 of the communities and recruited equal number of community workers in the areas to take care of the health and other needs of the people.
He said: “We have been able to reach 108,575 children under the age of five years in the communities and delivered oral polio vaccines to 314,604.”
In his remarks, the Director, Niger State Programmes on Immunisation, Dr. Samuel Jiya, said the state Ministry of Health had completed arrangements to “bring all primary health care intervention agencies under one umbrella for efficiency and better service delivery”.
The state chairperson of the Coalition for Civil Society Organisations and Media, Mary Jalingo, appealed to government at all levels to increase budgetary allocations to primary health care where she said “we have most of the people”.