Over 9m doses of vaccine delivered to boost healthcare services in Nigeria – ehealth reveals

This was made known by thee Executive Director, ehealth Africa , Atef Fawaz, on the sidelines of the 2023 Insight Learning Forum organised by ehealth Africa.

Fawaz said Nigeria’s healthcare system is paramount to his organisation based on the challenges that could be solved via digital solutions.

He said: “Most of our solutions are all driven by an analysis of the need of what the problem is. So we always try to identify a problem and work around solving it and this was particularly the vaccine delivery solution was developed to make sure that no one is left unvaccinated due to logistical challenges.

“We all know the challenges in the whole nation when it comes to logistics, especially in very remote areas and the solution was developed to make sure that vaccines can reach everywhere at the same time the solution focused a lot on accountability and transparency.

“So everyone could see at a point in time where the vaccines were picked from, and where were they delivered, so it’s a full system that allows monitoring of stocks, request of new stocks, and making sure that vaccines are delivered to very remote areas.

“We have proved that by running the project in Kano ,Bauchi , Zamfara and the programme is currently still running in Sokoto state and we deliver to basically all the health facilities.

“So this has been quite effective and has reduced stock outs to a bare minimum number.

“The impact is, as you can see the numbers I mean, more than 9 million doses of vaccines that have been delivered and this was never something that has ever been done before.

“So and this has direct impact on everyone’s health, you know, especially children that are from zero to five and need to get their routine immunisation. So it does have a direct impact on giving everyone a better health for the future.

“Most of our solutions are all driven by an analysis of the need of what the problem is. So we always try to identify a problem and work around solving it and this was particularly the vaccine delivery solution was developed to make sure that no one is left unvaccinated due to logistical challenges.”

However, he said there are a lot challenges but with the innovative ability Nigerians have the challenges can be handled.

“I think we have a lot of talent in the country a lot of skills, and I think its just to puts all of these in the right place for us to come up with innovative solutions and even be world leading in those solutions”, he added.

Meanwhile, the Senior Manager, Software Engineering in Software Engineering Global Health Informatics Units, ehealth Africa, Jamil Galadanci, disclosed invention of a digital solution called Lomis logistic management information system to tackle the problem of high percentage of stockouts.

“We decided to invent a Lomis Logistic Management Information System because of the problem at that time of high percentage of stockouts in many of our health facilities across the country, which resulted in a loss of zero those children.

“At some point Nigeria was reported the highest zero dose children in the entire world and that’s the reason why we invented the Logistic Management Information System to improve the delivery and management of those vaccines in our health facilities and also to provide a near real time, visibility of what is happening across those facilities, which in turn would improve accountability, transparency and most importantly, the efficiency of how we manage those facilities all with the hope of improving the availability of those stocks in those health facilities which consequently would reduce the percentage of from zero dose children in the country”, Galadanci added.

The Director, Pharmaceutical Services, and Logistics Officer, Primary Health Care Development Agency, Sokoto State, Pharmacist Murtala Bello said, “So this meeting is very important to us because it is a learning forum where we hear from people who have been implementing different digital solutions towards improving healthcare delivery in the country.

“We have partnered with the convener of this meeting, eHealth Africa, and what they are doing for us now is they are delivering our vaccines to our health facilities using the same digital solutions.

“They are using a software called Lomis Deliver, which we have had a lot of experience with.

“Largely, sometimes the reason why we have limited coverage sometimes it may be due to stock outs of these vaccines.

“And since the delivery and the use of digital solutions have improved their delivery, it has also improved availability of these vaccines. So therefore, improve accessibility and of course, increased immunisation coverage in the State.”