I am Dr. Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi. I work with the Department of Planning, Research, and Statistics, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria.

Health workers in Nigeria are currently working very hard to improve the very poor indices that is prevalent in the system, ranging from high maternal and child mortality to a very high prevalence of infectious diseases.

By far, the major focus of the country is the control of vaccine preventable diseases.

Following the release of the last result of National Immunization Coverage Survey and the dissemination of the result in 2017, the country appeared to have had a Wake-up call after noting the very low coverages in Routine Immunization across several States. As a result, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Health saddled with the implementation of National Health Policies that relate to Primary Health Care, declared Emergency on Routine Immunization and set up a National Emergency Routine Immunization Coordinating Centre (NERICC). This Centre was also replicated across the 18 focal States as State Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centres (SERICC). A Routine Immunization Monitoring Team was set up, at the Federal and State levels, that comprised NPCDA staff working in Routine Immunization Division of the Department of Disease Control and Immunization of the Agency and Development/Implementation Partners with interest in Routine Immunization. These teams meet everyday to brainstorm and follow-up with the progress of Routine Immunization with a target to achieve 85% coverage and above in all the Routine Immunization Antigens by the year 2028.

Closely related to improvement in Routine Immunization Coverage is improvement in Routine Immunization Data Reporting. Up to this time, the major reporting platform for health data reporting in Nigeria had been the District Vaccine and Devices Monitoring Tool (DVD-MT). But in 2013, the National Council on Health, the apex decision-making body on health, approved the adoption of the District Health Information System (DHIS) as the sole electronic health data reporting platform. Since then, the country has been working on achieving a full transition from DVD-MT to DHIS2. Closely associated with the full transition is improvement in data quality. The DHIS2 platform offers opportunity for better data visualization and will make it easier for data monitoring and data quality improvement.