AN INNOVATIVE community enumeration strategy is transforming Nigeria’s fight against polio, helping hundreds of thousands of children, and thousands of pregnant and breastfeeding women, access life-saving vaccines across 14 states, the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) has said.
IHVN’s Senior Technical Advisor for Advocacy and Stakeholder Engagement, Dr. Temitope Kolade told National Record that said the Institute’s Identify, Enumerate and Vaccinate (IEV) Project uses digital line lists of eligible children and pregnant women to support microplanning for polio vaccination, routine immunisation and other primary health care (PHC) services.
Launched last year in Kano, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Borno, Yobe, Zamfara and Kaduna states, the project has expanded to Adamawa, Bauchi, Kwara, Nasarawa and Niger states.
She described the IEV Project as a systematic, community-based approach that identifies and registers every eligible child, pregnant woman, and breastfeeding mother before immunisation campaigns begin, helping to ensure that no one is left behind. Funded by the Gates Foundation and implemented in partnership with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), the project is executed by IHVN as a sub-recipient of the grant.
She said the project strengthens polio immunisation by using accurate household data to deliver routine immunisation, polio vaccination and maternal health services in priority states.
Dr. Kolade described polio as a highly infectious but vaccine-preventable disease that mainly affects children under five years of age and can cause lifelong paralysis or, in severe cases, death.
According to her, the project begins with an annual household enumeration exercise conducted in phases to capture newborns and pregnant women. “The enumeration provides us with a more accurate picture of the number of children who need to be vaccinated. Rather than relying solely on population projections, we work with actual field data, enabling better planning and more effective immunisation campaigns,” she said.
She explained that IHVN teams visit communities, including hard-to-reach areas, to register eligible children and pregnant women, providing reliable data for planning and measuring vaccination coverage.
“As the vaccination campaign progresses, the figures from the enumeration become our benchmark for measuring performance. When we report 80 or 90 per cent vaccination coverage, those figures are based on verified field data rather than estimates,” she added.
Dr. Kolade said the involvement of traditional and religious leaders has strengthened community acceptance of vaccines, while continuous data verification ensures that children who are temporarily absent and newly identified eligible children are captured before or during vaccination exercises.
She said the IEV Project is being expanded in phases, beginning with states that have historically recorded the highest disease burden and lowest vaccination coverage. “Our plan is to expand the project each year, subject to the availability of funding, until it reaches every part of the country. We want to ensure that every child, regardless of where they live, has access to life-saving vaccines,” she said.
