The Federal Government has begun construction of Abuja hub, one of the three mega stores planned for Abuja, Lagos and Kano for the purpose of massively expanding vaccine storage capacity at the national level in Nigeria.
Speaking during the ground-breaking ceremony marking the commencement of the work on Thursday, Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, explained that the increasing population of the country has necessitated the need for the expansion of storage space.
He said: “Nigeria is a large country and continuously increasing population coupled with introduction of new and essential vaccines.
“This requires that we have sufficient storage space for vaccines and injection materials for efficient implementation of our immunization programme.
“The supply chain challenges highlighted by COVID-19 vaccination effort also underlines the need for massive expansion of storage space which will confer a measure of resilience in the system.”
According to the minister,”In recognition of the need for resilience in the system, the country following detailed analysis decided on a system redesign which includes construction of three mega stores at the national level, deployment of optimised cold chain equipment at the health facilities, an efficient distribution system and the deployment of an electronic logistics management information system to provide visibility across the supply chain.”
He said the ground-breaking ceremony was a significant milestone of the system redesign journey.
In his speech, the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, recalled that, “When this management of NPHCDA came on board in 2017, we inherited an intractable problem of a perennial lack of storage space, especially for vaccines and injection materials, which led to an inefficient supply chain for vaccines and other health commodities.”
According to him,” There was simply insufficient space to store procured and dearly needed commodities.”
