Nigeria: Stakeholders Seek Active Collaboration To Boost HPV Vaccination Coverage

The wife of the Katsina State Governor Dr. Zulaihat Radda has called for active stakeholder collaboration and a a robust awareness campaign to achieve 100% HPV vaccination coverage in the country.

Dr Radda who made the call in Abuja at the 2nd Stakeholders’ Summit on Cervical Cancer Elimination in Nigeria,
condemned the high prevalence of cervical cancer in Nigeria,

She urged all stakeholders to approach the situation with urgency, compassion, and active collaboration to ensure those in the community are carried along.

”It is our collective responsibility to change the narrative, today we gather as stakeholders to reaffirm our commitment to eradicating cervical cancer, we must work together to ensure that every woman and girl has access to screening and vaccination.”

”From May this year, Katsina successfully rolled out the HPV vaccine among other phase two states and achieved 100 percent coverage with my daughter as the first official off-taker in the state. I urge us all to approach this meeting with a sense of urgency, compassion, and collaboration.”

The Executive Director of End Cervical Cancer Nigeria Initiative, Dr Ishak Lawal said the summit aimed to brainstorm best practices in Cervical cancer elimination.

”The main thing about this conference, this summit, is that we want to bring all stakeholders together to brainstorm and catalyze or scale up best practices, the whole thing is to show that one person cannot achieve Cervical cancer elimination.”

According to Dr Lawal, ”It requires collaborative efforts that are individuals doing beautiful things in their own corners. let them come together and provide visibility where we brainstorm and cross-catalyze ideas and then we scale up best practices.”

He said the objective of the summit is mainly to fast-track Nigeria to be able to achieve the Cervical cancer elimination target.

”If you’re aware, WHO has set a target that for us to eliminate Cervical cancer, we must achieve 90% vaccination of our adolescent girls. We must achieve 70% screening of eligible women. And if we screen, we must treat every 90% of screen-positive cases, he added.

In an address, the Executive Director of the Policy Innovation Centre, Dr Osasuyi Dirisu, commended the federal government’s progress highlighted critical gaps, and suggested steps to improve health outcomes for women and girls.

”Our country has one of the highest health care and trafficking rates in the world, and it’s estimated that there are about 500,000 people with health problems like this. So we have cancer, and I won’t go into statistics today because we have a lot of groups in the room, but just laying that foundation, it’s considered the third most common cancer, and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women aged 15 to 44 in Nigeria.”

”So we need to be reflecting deeply about what we can do based on the evidence we know that cervical cancer is potentially preventable, and one of the few cancers that can be eliminated through vaccination. As we think about this because my topic is reflecting on how we strengthen collaboration to achieve elimination in Nigeria,”

Dr Dirisu noted that WHO’s ambitious targets for cervical cancer elimination have mandated Nigeria to maintain an incidence rate of below 4 per 100,000 women.

”As ambitious as that is, it’s important and imperative because we know that meeting these targets will ensure that we can protect our NHS and contribute to the overall social and economic development of Nigeria.”

”So, like I said earlier, in line with the global strategy to eliminate cancer by 2030, we know that the WHO-recommended HIV vaccination is included in immunization programmes in countries where cervical cancer is an economic priority and has a focus on sustainable and feasible implementation.”

In a message, the Director General of the National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment, Professor. Usman Aliyu, said there are plans to increase cancer treatment centers from six to at least 12 while prioritizing pre-cancer treatment.