Polio Eradication: The Volunteer Community Mobilizers Network Fully Operational on the Ground in Kebbi State, Northern Nigeria

This news report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) provides information about communication strategies and activities being conducted in Kebbi State, in northern Nigeria, as part of the effort to eradicate polio in that endemic country. As of May 2012, 200 volunteer community mobilisers selected from 200 high-risk settlements (villages) were fully operational. Their mission is to reduce the percentage of missed children in Kebbi State through targeted house-to-house interventions to generate demand for and acceptance of the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Trained to work as "change agents" in the community, these volunteers are responsible for house-to-house mobilisation for polio and routine immunisation. Interpersonal counselling on immunisation and promotion of key household practices such as treatment of diarrhoea, prevention of malaria, and breastfeeding are carried out door-to-door and person-to-person. Every volunteer is equipped with a pictorial flip book and monitoring tools.

The volunteers have also started to identify and characterise chronically missed children and non-compliant parents through what is described here as a community-friendly approach. According to Tommi Laulajainen, UNICEF Chief of Polio Communication in Nigeria, they "will track every unimmunized child and every case of refusal of oral polio vaccine. Every volunteer is expected to be a catalyst for community participation in health programmes in her settlement."

With the support of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Volunteer Community Mobilizers Network initiative will cover in a first phase three high-risk states: Kebbi, Kano and Sokoto. In a second phase, it will be expanded to the States of Zamfara, Jigawa, Katsina, Yobe, and Borno. In total, over 2,150 settlement-level volunteer mobilisers will be recruited, trained, and deployed in the villages where missed children and refusals of OPV are still persistent by the end of July 2012.