Barely months after a community in Guri local government area of Jigawa State was persuaded by authorities to turn from its defiant resistance against polio vaccine for many years, another community, Garbagal, in the same local government, is presenting a similar challenge. It has threatened to boycott the ongoing immunisation exercise in protest against the non completion of a clinic project started over 12 years ago.
Even with the intervention of the International Fund for Agricultural Development {IFAD] to press for the actualisation of the clinic, the project is yet to be completed.? The community was said to have several times, lodged complaints to all authorities concerned on the difficulties they have been facing due to the absent of any easily accessible health facilities, imploring the leaders to acknowledge their plight by completing the project that will help them access basic health care services, especially, during emergency.
For the rural community, the lack of handy health care services becomes a much bigger challenge during rainy seasons, when malaria cases are rampant. Ordinarily, it takes several hours for a pregnant woman to receive emergency assistance due to poor roads and long distance to reach Guri town for the available hospital. Garbagal Community however, has another reason to reject the Polio immunization exercise, it is regarded as a gross misplacement of priority, in which governments and international donor agencies decide to commit huge amount of money on Polio, while other health problems, like malaria, a killer disease ravaging every family is given less attention.
It is evident that the action of the community was calculated to press on the authorities to respond to the many threats posed by the complete absence, or near absence of any health care facility within reach, a situation which has for many years caused untold hardships to the local inhabitants.
“We have been forgotten as people”, a member of Garbagal Community,?? Alhaji Bukar Abdullahi, lamented even as he stated that they were? seriously facing many problems in quality health care delivery. Also speaking to our correspondent,? Malam Garba? Jarma Garbagal blamed IFAD for neglecting the clinic project, regretting that the uncompleted structure had now been overtaken by rodents,? while dogs and other dangerous reptiles like snakes have also besieged the place. He added, ‘It is very unfortunate that despite the advanced stage the project had reached,? Garbagal Clinic still remains an elusive hope’ .??
Jarma said it would be politically expedient for Governor Sule Lamido to take over and effect the completion of the project to relieve the community of the traumatic experience it is currently going through, due to absence of any form of healthcare facility within the community.???
Incidentally, the threat to boycott polio immunisation comes at the heels of the just concluded arrangement by governments to flag off the polio immunisation campaign.
One of the community elders, Mustapha Shehu, said, “Garbagal Community has never turned against any government policies designed to improve or protect the socio-economic welfare of the community’, but this time, there are indications to boycott the polio vaccination exercise until we see evidence that work has resumed on the abandoned health facility site. We are law abiding citizens but we are now left with no alternative than to resort to protest to draw the attention of government and other authorities concerned to acknowledge our plight, so that we can have a sense of belonging as citizens of Jigawa State in particular, and the nation in general.
However, the Jigawa state IFAD programme Officer, Alhaji? Umar? Abubakar Danzomo, said that the organisation took over the abandoned project from Guri local government in 2008 with the intention of completing.
He explained, “When we took over the project, it was at foundation level, we developed it to linter stage, but due to? financial constraints, we were not able to complete it.”