The Federal Government has debunked media report claiming that not less than N10.6 billion had been earmarked for the transportation of COVID-19 vaccines across the country.
A national daily had on Saturday, in its report, claimed to have cited a document put together by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), and presented to the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), which set the budget for the logistics distribution of vaccines to the states and council areas at N10.6 billion.
However, reacting to the said report on Saturday, the Executive Director of the NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, described the quoted figure as incredulous, explaining that the responsibility of distribution of vaccines across the country had been taken over by the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID).
According to him, CACOVID had supplied to take up the responsibility of the logistics distribution by imparting an plane to transport vaccines from Abuja to states with airports, in addition to vans for similarly dispatch from airports to areas without airports.
“I imply, I’m hearing from you for the primary time. It doesn’t make any sense that on the one hand, we’ve communicated very surely to Nigerians that the Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID), a non-public area initiative, has furnished a shipment plane with a purpose to help supply the vaccines from Abuja to all states that have useful airports.
“For those that don't have purposeful airports, there's a delivery van in an effort to carry the vaccines from the ones airports to the states without functionality.
“I do no longer see how that is going to value N10 billion. So there's no reality in that. That facts. So there’s no reality in that information.
“The reality is what I even have informed you, that's that CACOVID has taken up the obligation of handing over the vaccines from Abuja to the states.
“The simplest value we’re going to incur is the cost of turning in the vaccines from any airport to close by states that don’t have purposeful airports. Clearly that can't be N10.6 billion”, he said.
When requested what the actual value would be, he stated “you could do the maths on the returned of an envelope and you realize that it can not be something near one billion naira proper?.
“So I trust that CACOVID has already recognized that cost as some thing they're going to take off. I do not understand how much it’s going to value them, however this is some thing that they've already diagnosed as a cost they will endure and we’re working together with them.
“So it is not accurate to say that the federal government is going to be expending N10.6 billion to move vaccines to the nation. That is incredulous”, he stated.
On the contemporary improvement at the a hundred,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines, the NPHCDA boss stated “So what passed off turned into that there was a committee that met at international degree, and took the choice that it made greater experience for Nigeria to get sixteen million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines in preference to 100,000 doses of Pfizer.
“Hundred thousand doses of Pfizer is a drop in the ocean and for the reason that the AstraZeneca vaccine is extra proper to our cold chain environments; from +2 to +8 °C.
“Not simplest will we have the necessary coldchain device, but additionally our medical examiners have the potential to manipulate vaccines of that temperature. So it just makes feel that we have to get vaccines that are greater suited to Nigeria,” he stated.
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