By Andy Adaigbe (FLAGNEWS).
OLEH.
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa says Delta state would remain committed to the fight against deadly diseases.
The governor stated this while flagging off the 2018 measles campaign at Oleh in Isoko south LGA.
Okowa stated that the health and well-being of all Deltans especially pregnant women and children, were priorities in the policies of the state. He noted that the policies of the state government were implemented based on the commitment to ensure that Deltans were healthy at all times and charged parents to ensure that their children and wards, do not die from preventable diseases such as measles.
The governor observed that the Health Insurance Scheme was set up to prevent out of pocket payment and to ensure healthy living. He noted that renovation and training of health personnels were ongoing across the state for the proper implementation of health programmes. The governor further advised Deltans to live in hygienic environment and also keep their kitchens clean and foods covered in order to prevent diseases.
Governor Okowa also used the opportunity to disclose that he held the Isoko people in very high esteem due to their support for his administration and his oath to be fair to all Deltans. He cautioned rumour mongers, peddling rumours that the Isoko people were being marginalised in the state budget and policies, to desist from peddling such rumours, instead they should seek for information whenever they are in doubt, for the interest of the good people of Isoko and Deltans in general.
Earlier, the state commissioner for health, Dr. Mordi Ononye, stated that measles virus had infected over 90% of children before their fifteenth birthday stressing that the campaign was a strategy aimed at vaccinating children aged nine to fifty nine months, with the measles vaccine, to confer on them lifelong immunity against the disease.
In her address, the Executive Assistant to the governor on E-Health and chairman of the state Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Isioma Okobah, stated that measles was one of the vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood which accounts for large proportion of child deaths among the under-5 in Nigeria.
The chairman of the agency added that measles was a highly infectious childhood disease caused by a virus and spread through nasal droplet spray or direct contact with nasal or throat secretion of infected persons and could result in serious complications such as deafness, blindness, pneumonia, diarrhoea and death.
Dr. Okobah further appealed to stakeholders, religious and traditional rulers, for an intensive community engagement and involvement in the measles campaign. She also called on mothers and caregivers to avail themselves of the opportunity by bringing their children to the various vaccination posts and health facilities to be immunized with the measles vaccine.
Highlight of the flag off ceremony was the immunization of children by governor Ifeanyi Okowa accompanied by the health commissioner and the officials of the Primary Health Care Development agency.
