The Zamfara State Government said it received vaccines for the prevention of diphtheria, with a vaccination exercise scheduled to begin across the state today.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr Nafisa Maradun, disclosed this during a one-day State-Level Traditional Leadership Engagement Meeting on the Zamfara Tracking and Accountability for Equitable Immunisation (Z-TRACE) Project in Gusau on Tuesday.
The announcement followed an outbreak of diphtheria that recorded 44 deaths out of 367 identified cases, with more than 200 recoveries.
The Director of Public Health in the ministry, Dr Yusuf Haske, had confirmed the outbreak in an interview with NAN in Gusau.
The development led the State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to extend school resumption by two weeks.
The commissioner said the state government had secured the vaccines and would administer them to children in the affected Local Government Areas beginning on Thursday.
Maradun, represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Rilwan Zurmi, said 11 local government areas of the state currently have reported cases of diphtheria.
She explained that results of analysis conducted by the ministry showed that most of the children who contracted the disease either did not receive vaccination or were not fully immunised.
Maradun described vaccination as essential to protecting children against preventable diseases, urging traditional rulers to intensify community sensitisation on the importance of immunisation.
The commissioner said the Sultan Foundation, under the Z-TRACE project, had targeted to reach zero-dose and under-immunised children across communities in seven local government areas of Zamfara identified to have a high number of such children.
Traditional rulers attended the meeting, officials of the State Primary Health Care Board, Ward Development Committees, health partners and Community-Based Organisations, among others.