Poor Remuneration, Inadequate Personnel, Mar NIPDs

Poor remuneration and inadequate personnel mar the just-concluded National Immunisation Plus Days (campaign) in Rivers State.

Monitoring the exercise which took place February 18 to 21, 2012, across the nation, The Tide gathered that the immunisers could not adequately cover the state due to the discouraging poor transport allowances paid to the personnel, which made some of the trained ad-hock staff to stay away from the exercise.

Focal person, Ward 11, Port Harcourt City  Local Government Area, Daba Prayer Bibi complained that she lacked team, members which made it difficult to adequately cover her assigned area.

Secondly, she complained that the transport allowance was also very poor as this had encouraged a lot of the trained personnel to shun the exercise.

She said, “I don’t have enough team members, I need more personnel. The transport money is also very poor, N500.00 (five hundred naira) for four days, pointing out that transportation now is very costly. Most of the people who were trained didn’t come because the payment is nothing to write home about, most of them are discouraged.”

Meanwhile, a medical practitioner in Port Harcourt, Nelson Uwalga, has given a commendation to the government for the initiative to take the immunisation to worship and social centres.

According to him, “reaching out to the people through worship and other social centres is a very good idea.”

He explained that in the worship centres, people listen to their leaders and also help disseminate the information because there is interconnection.

He also expressed delight in the seriousness with which government has taken preventive medicine to the people, saying, “immunisation is preventive healthcare, the returns of the money invested is usually very huge, particularly in our environment where you have a lot of infectious disease conditions, so the best way to approach it is by preventive measures through immunisation.”

Uwalga expressed regrets however, that “the level of education and understanding around the country was poor.” This, he stated could mar the success of the preventive measures taken by government to eradicate vaccine preventable diseases.

Tonye Nria-Dappa