The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) on Friday launched a book documenting the COVID-19 Vaccination Experiences of Northern States in Nigeria to mitigate impact and response to vaccine acceptance in the country.
Executive Director, CITAD Dr. Yunusa Ya’u represented at the book launch by the Coordinator Public Education of COVID-19 Vaccine, Hamza Ibrahim stated the book is important to decipher the issues of disinformation and misinformation regarding response to vaccine.
Ya”u, noted that during the last COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the nation, people were reluctant to accept the vaccines due to rumors about its effect which was widely spread on social media.
He further explained that the issue of hesitancy is not only around COVID-19 vaccine, but it’s also around immunisation and a host of others hence the need to document
experiences regarding vaccination exercise in the 19 Northern states while taking into consideration various hindrances and challenges specific to the entire states.
His words:
“The prevalent misinformation or disinformation or hindrance to accepting the COVID-19 will be different from one state to another. And we think this, if documented, can help in future initiatives aimed at addressing the future pandemics.
“So these are experiences of vaccination exercises from nineteen to northern states. And they are beautiful experiences because they have been collated from the primary health care development agencies.
“There are many issues and this is the reason why we came up with this book, and we highlighted the number of strategies that different states developed and has worked for them in the vaccination exercises.”
He added that the book will serve as a learning tool and serve as a way for people to respond to vaccination issues in future.
“In case anything comes up in the future, this book really vital, it is well-detailed with several strategies that can help to respond to vaccination issues.
“Today we are happy to say that we are formally unveiling the book to be distributed to different states and libraries for people to read and benefit from what has been implemented”.