By Omoyeni Ojeifo
Health sector stakeholders have called for the aggressive adoption of data-driven innovations to boost routine immunization and expand vaccine access for children in Nigeria’s most remote and underserved communities.
The call was made on Monday in Abuja during the Strengthening Routine Immunisation through Continuous Accountability and Action in Nigeria (STRICAAN) learning event.
Themed “Leveraging Data-Driven Innovation for Precise Routine Immunisation Delivery in Nigeria,” the forum highlighted the urgent need for targeted, data-backed strategies to improve nationwide vaccine coverage.
Persecondnews correspondent reports that the Managing Director of Sydani Group, Sidney Sampson, who addressed the occasion, said the STRICAAN project was conceived to address longstanding challenges in identifying children who miss routine immunisation.
He said the initiative replaced estimates and assumptions with accurate household-level data to improve planning and coverage.
“We reflected on how best to solve this, and the idea was born. Instead of using estimates and assumptions, we decided to build a platform that would allow us to find children where they are and find households,” he said.
“We use that data to target them and ensure they receive every intervention they need,” he added.
Sampson said one of the project’s biggest achievements was identifying children and communities that would otherwise have been missed by routine immunisation services.
He added that the initiative had also secured strong government ownership, which supports its sustainability.
“We have been able to find people, communities and children that would absolutely have been missed,” he said.
“That gives us joy because we brought light to places that would otherwise have remained in darkness in terms of receiving health interventions.”
In his remarks, Akolade Jimoh, Associate Principal of Sydani Group and STRICAAN Project Programme Manager, said the intervention had recorded significant progress in improving precision-based immunisation planning and reaching previously missed children across implementing states.
“The intervention is helping us move from broad assumptions to precise targeting, ensuring that children who would otherwise be missed are identified and reached with life-saving vaccines,” he said.
On his part, the Executive Secretary of the Niger State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Junaidu Inuwa, said the project had helped address one of the biggest challenges in routine immunisation.
He said Niger State was moving away from outdated population estimates to precise, household-level data for planning and service delivery.
“For almost two decades, we’ve relied on projected population figures from the 2006 census. But with population growth, migration and insecurity, it has become difficult to use those estimates for effective planning,” he said.
“What STRICAAN has done is move us away from estimates to precision.”
Inuwa explained that the project maps buildings and households, identifies eligible children and tracks zero-dose children.
“People go into the field to map buildings and households, identify children and document them.
“That gives us the exact number of zero-dose and under-five children, and if anyone defaults, the system reminds us so they can be reached with immunisation,” he added.
Also speaking, Dr. Jacob Vasumu, Director of Disease Control and Immunisation at the Adamawa State Primary Health Care Development Agency, said the project had demonstrated the need to institutionalise household identification and enumeration as part of routine primary healthcare activities.
“Through Sydani, this is the time that we should embed the Identification and Enumeration process permanently into our primary healthcare routine activities,” he said.
Vasumu said reliance on outdated population figures had continued to affect planning and immunisation coverage, stressing the need for decisions to be guided by quality data.
“We should move to taking decisions based on the quality of our data, but the greatest challenge has been relying on projected population figures.”
Vasumu expressed optimism that the lessons from the project would benefit not only Adamawa and Niger States but also strengthen routine immunisation nationwide.
“With this learning event, there are decisions and lessons that will be impactful not only to Adamawa and Niger States, but we should take ownership for continuity,” he said.
The event also featured panel discussions and interactive learning sessions, where participants examined lessons from the STRICAAN project.
Persecondnews reports that participants included representatives of the Federal and State Governments, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC), UNICEF, VillageReach, Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), PATH, Malaria Consortium and other development partners.