The federal government established a new vaccine centre Wednesday to increase immunisation and properly store donor vaccines.
Osagie Ehanire, the health minister, inaugurated the Abuja Hub at the National Strategic Cold Storage Thursday to increase government vaccine storage capacity.
He was pleased with the opening of the Abuja hub, one of three giant stores planned for Abuja, Lagos, and Kano to dramatically increase vaccine storage capacity in Nigeria.
The minister said Nigeria is a vast country with a growing population and new vaccines.
For efficient immunisation, we need vaccine and injection material storage space.
“The supply chain problems highlighted by the COVID-19 immunisation campaign further underscore the necessity for large storage capacity expansion to provide system resilience.
“In recognition of the need for resilience in the system, the country, after detailed analysis, decided on a system redesign which includes the construction of three mega stores at the national level, deployment of optimised cold chain equipment at health facilities, an efficient distribution system, and an electronic logistics management information system to provide visibility across the supply chain.
“This groundbreaking event marks a major system overhaul milestone. GAVI’s sponsoring of two of the three mega shops in Abuja and Kano is greatly appreciated.
“It is an honour to break ground for this critical piece of infrastructure for the country’s immunisation programme.
NPHCDA Executive Director Faisal Shuaib stated the agency inherited an intractable problem of a recurring lack of storage space, notably for vaccines and injection materials, which led to an inefficient vaccine and health commodity supply chain.
He said: “There was just insufficient space to store acquired and sorely required items. The Department of Logistics and Health Commodities, with technical support from the National Logistics Working Group, had to accept fragmented imports.
Several shipments over time resulted in high operational expenditures.
“The logistics team in the nation established a strategic system design plan to solve vaccine Supply Chain problems.
In July 2019, the Gavi integrated supply Chain 2 (iSC2) team assessed the plan. This plan included massive storage capacity expansion at the national level through the construction of three megastores in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano (the 3-Hub project), optimal CCE and management practise at the state level, adequacy of cold chain storage space at the point of service delivery through implementation of a policy of “at least one functional and optimised CCE in each of the country’s political ward,” a project that benefited from the Gavi Cold Chain Equipment Opt.
Due to resource constraints, this strategic plan failed.
We provided funds for the Lagos Hub through a World Bank IDA Credit programme for polio eradication. The World Bank is overseeing Lagos Hub construction, which has begun.
