Posted on: Sat 17-09-2016

The federal government has been enjoined to meet its $181million immunization funding requirement for 2017 and 2018. The members of the National Immunization Financing Task Team, (NIFT), made the call yesterday during a retreat organized by the Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR) with support from Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFaH) in Lagos. NIFT is an advocacy committee which pushes for sustainable immunization financing and vaccine security in Nigeria.

Project Director, Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR) and a member of the committee, Dr. Aminu Magashi said that Nigeria’s funding requirement increases as it began transition process for GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance support in Nigeria.

He said that for 2017 and 2018, close to $264million is required for immunization to be paid for between Nigeria and GAVI and Nigeria is expected to commit $181million out of the $264million to fund immunization programme.  
Head of Communications, National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, (NPHDA), Eugene Ivase said Nigeria faces an enormous funding gap for the immunization programme because of the cost of additional vaccines, expanding birth cohort, loss of funding following GAVI graduation and insufficient budgetary allocation to vaccines.
Ivase who also represented the Chairman NIFT, Dr. Ben Anyene said Nigeria needs to secure more money for its vaccine programme starting from N29billion in 2016 and rising to an estimated N63billion by 2020 to fill the gap.

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