This issue of The Double Loop tells the story of a Leader in the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030), Maryam Idris, Community Health Worker in Zango Ward, Kano Municipal Local Government Area, Kano State, Nigeria.
Maryam describes how she first heard of The Geneva Learning Foundation’s peer learning programmes through a visiting colleague from The Gambia, and how she has used what she has learned through the Movement for Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) to improve immunization in Zango Ward.
This is the fifth in a series of cases following exceptional Movement for IA2030 leaders: including Wasnam Faye (Senegal), Franck Monga (Democratic Republic of Congo), María Monzón (Argentina), and Kingsley Nignere (Ghana).
Your experience and insights help other members of the Movement for IA2030. Click on the link at the end of each section to share:
If you are a donor, partner, or researcher interested in these insights, we encourage you to share your thoughts or write directly to Ian Steed, Insights Unit Editor.
What are the challenges you have faced where the support you were getting from your organisation was not enough? What have you learned from colleagues in immunization in other countries? How did they support you? What worked - or did not work?
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Maryam Idris has been a Community Health Worker in the hospital in Zango Ward, Kano Municipal Local Government Area, Kano State, Nigeria since 2014. Zango Ward is an urban area with an estimated population of 65 000. Maryam describes three groups of people within the population: the traders, agricultural workers, and a smaller group of more educated people.
Maryam describes Zango Ward as an impoverished community, and this affects both the health needs of the population, and their ability to access health services: some people do not have time to access health services, while others do not have easy access to health centres because of poor transport. A current threat within the community is an outbreak of diphtheria.
Maryam’s own role as a community health worker includes work in immunization and maternity services. As well as meeting individual clients, this involves meetings with key community stakeholders, including village heads and other opinion formers within communities.
Maryam’s decision to become a health worker was strongly influenced by her father, a teacher, who saw her as a caring child. She enjoys her profession, and gains satisfaction from saving lives and helping people to live in a healthy manner. She is frustrated when she does not have the right things to help her clients. COVID-19 helped Maryam to realise the extent to which she and her work were trusted by the community. She sees this trust as an opportunity for her to work hard to change old practices for new ones, using the new knowledge that she is gaining through the Movement for IA2030.
Zero-Dose children are a concern within Zango Ward. These are reached through Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIA), Integration with other Primary Healthcare interventions such as Vitamin A supplementation and deworming, Periodic Intensification of Routine Immunization (PIRI), and Vaccination on Contact activities.
One barrier to immunization that Maryam encounters is that some husbands are reluctant for their children to be immunised. When a mother brings this up, Maryam follows up with a home visit to speak to the parents.
Maryam cites an example of the challenges she faces that she experienced during an inactivated polio vaccine mass campaign, describing how a head of family refused for his children to be vaccinated, not because he was not aware of the importance of immunization, but because of poverty. He claimed that the government did not help poor people but prefered to chase individuals around when it came to immunization. He threatened to arrest whoever entered his house to immunize his nine children, all of which were Zero-dose. During immunization campaigns, he usually sits by the door of his house and says that nobody is in.