In Kaduna State, Town Hall meetings are opening a new frontier for addressing community compliance in the polio eradication programme and ensuring community ownership of immunization. The meetings, which started in June 2005, have been conducted in the 15 very high risk local government areas (LGA). In Kaduna North LGA, data is showing a consistent drop in the number of non-compliance cases from 5,357 in the August 2005 round, to 1,312 in the March 2006 round.

Town Hall meetings are a way of bringing together communities, usually led by the district head’s. For example in Kaduna North, the LGA chairman, Alhaji Shehu Ahmed, encourages members of the community to freely express their views and ask questions which are answered by experts and stakeholders, including representatives of WHO and UNICEF. Community Assistants (CA) appointed by the state governor as ward-level liaisons with the public on issues of governance, are also regular participants.

Results from the five sessions held so far in the LGA have been encouraging. When participants at the Kawo meeting, raised the issue of why it was only the children of the poor who were vaccinated during immunization campaigns, other participants agreed. To address the community concerns, the LGA chairman presented his seven eligible children for vaccination during the flag-off of the next national immunization day. A sensitization meeting at Abakpa Community where the people prefer private facilities to the health centre, has led to improved routine immunization (RI) coverage.

Alhaji Tijani Ahmed Ibrahim, Executive Director TV, Kaduna State Media Corporation, and Chairman, of the Working Group of State Social Mobilization Committee (SSMC), notes that the station produces and airs media programming of the Town Hall meetings to ensure a wider reach of the key discussions which affect communities. He notes the role of the State Action Committee on Immunization (SACI) in addressing misinformation on the programme through similar meetings.

Hon Abdukareem Abdul, CA for Badarawa/Malali Ward, and Amina Yusuf Dantsoho, LGA Health Educator, are optimistic that additional efforts to reach members of the Kalakato Sect and the Jehovah Witnesses who have avoided the meetings in the LGA, would work. They plan to use future meetings to promote routine immunization, and the importance of reporting acute flaccid paralysis and other diseases. Abdul believes that the involvement of intermediate-level religious leaders would be effective in places like Zaria with significant levels of non-compliance.

The idea of the town hall meetings came from Shehu Kura of the Voice of America, during an advocacy visit by members of the State Social Mobilization Committee last May. Community involvement and participation are critical for ensuring community ownership of immunization. Community ownership is critical to ensuring all children are protected from all vaccine preventable diseases such as polio.

- By Nosa Owens-Ibie