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Preparing Ahead: How NPHCDA is harnessing capacity building to improve health workers’ response to COVID – 19 vaccination

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As Nigeria waits to receive the 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines at the end of January, frontline health workers across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, would be given priority.

This also calls for the need to prepare health workers ahead of the vaccinations and other areas of response to the pandemic.

In line with the development, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) is helping to build the capacities of public health practitioners, preparing them to handle bigger responsibilities in global health security, especially now.

“Nigeria has over 60,000 health workers, who are providing routine immunization. The Covid 19 vaccine introduction will require capacity building for this health workforce in addition to other complementary personnel that would be incorporated,” said the agency.

NPHCDA further assured that capacity building of the workforce would be built to deliver the COVID 19 vaccines as supportive supervision is a key component and would be conducted in three phases of pre-introduction, introduction and post-introduction at all levels to help the health workers manage the vaccination better.

Pre-introduction activities, according to NPHCDA, would commence early January, pre-introduction spot checks in February 2021, Covid 19 implementation training activities in February, while February/March 2021 will be for Covid 19 introduction launch (Phase 1: mRNA vaccines).

The agency also noted that training would be implemented utilising a cascade mode of delivery from national levels to state and local government areas.

“The core of national trainers (master trainers) will be focal points from Nigeria COVID-19 vaccine introduction technical working group, other staff of the NPHCDA, and partners working at the national level”.

Before deploying the health workers, the agency said there is a need for assessment to help identify gaps that have the potential to disrupt the implementation. Also, to ensure safety of the participants, NPHCDA said that infection prevention control (IPC) would be implemented in line with Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) guidelines during onsite training.

For safety, NPHCDA said that COVID 19 vaccine would be stored in the Ultra Cold Chain (UCC) at the NCDC labs before distribution to the Zonal Cold Stores located in the six geopolitical zones of the country namely; Kano, Minna, Bauchi, Lagos, Enugu and Warri.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also prompted the NPHCDA to conduct an unprecedented capacity building exercise using e-learning methods to equip over 7,000 national and state-level program managers across the country with the knowledge to cascade training to health workers at the local government level on pandemic response and maintaining essential services.

Meanwhile, about one percent of the expected COVID-19 vaccine will be received by the Nigerian health workers out of the 40 percent the federal government intends to administer in the country. COVID-19 disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable. Health workers are poised to play a crucial role in fighting the pandemic, especially in a country like Nigeria with less resilient health systems.

Nigeria has had over a hundred thousand confirmed cases of the novel 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection. At least, 20 Nigerian doctors were dead from complications arising from COVID-19 infection in December, and many more have tested positive after then.

“Frontline health workers would be prioritised, while other batches would be administered to the elderly and vulnerable persons with co-morbidities based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines,” said Bassey Okposen, programme manager, national emergency routine immunisation coordination centre, NPHCDA.

Okposen said that is the first priority when the limited doses arrive towards the end of January and early February would be the frontline health workers like immigration, airport, police, and military on essential duties, those working in the labs and other medical practitioners.

“Those states with a higher number of cases will be given additional doses. We have mapped out the health workers in each state and locations where these vaccines will be deployed as soon as we receive them.

“All the states in the country have cases and we need to get the vaccine to them all if we want to achieve herd immunity,” he added.

Doyin Odubanjo, public health expert based in Lagos said administering the vaccines and training would expose health workers to many issues that are unclear to them, and that it would give them the confidence to be able to help nurture the right attitudes while in the mission.

“Infection prevention and control is a key tenet of the response to COVID-19, health workers need the support of everyone from the individuals to the government,” he said.

However, globally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is working in collaboration with scientists, businesses, and global health organisations to speed up the pandemic response and facilitate equitable access and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

WHO has set-up a course that provides general information on COVID-19 and specific information on storage, handling, and administration of the vaccine, recording, and monitoring including for adverse events following immunization (AEFI), and communication (acceptance and demand) through a series of short video lectures and quizzes to test your knowledge to help frontline health workers in various countries.

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