UNICEF counsels on birth registration

Some of the participants at the UNICEF 2025-2027 work plan consultations

The United Nations Children’s Fund Chief of Field, Bauchi Field office, Dr Nuzhat Rafique, has stressed the need for every child in Gombe must be registered and issued a birth certificate.

She made this disclosure in Gombe during the annual review and 2025-2027 work plan consultations.

According to Dr Rafique, “Every child should be registered and be given a birth certificate in Gombe. We want every child to have very good health services, indicating immunisation. No child should be zero dose.”

While acknowledging that Gombe has made progress in this area, she stressed that there is still much work to be done, emphasising the need for every child to be registered for vaccination and given access to good health services, nutrition, and education.

Rafique warned that malnutrition can have long-term consequences for a child’s development and the nation’s economic growth.

“Once the child goes into malnutrition, no matter what you do to bring the child to better nutrition status, the damage in the brain is done, and that affects the intelligence of the nation and the economic gains through that generation,” she said.

The Gombe UNICEF boss who called for the sustenance of the Gavi/ UNICEF Memorandum of Understanding, maintained, “As GAVI agencies funds go down, we want government to step up their support because finally these people belong to Gombe and to this government and as UNICEF, we have to stay here to give our technical support for everyone but we have to build the capacity of people to take up things themselves and become independent.

“The government should take up this project in such a way that these gains should be sustained and improved upon, with a pledge that such should not have happened nor will happen again, and flowing ffrom the minddset  that if the GAVI funding decreases or declines, obviously they have to be enough but the Government should keep on increasing their contributions.”

She maintained  that when health financing is prioritised, the government will reduce cost.

“Then finally, there will be a better status of health for the children which will be very cost effective for the government. Only then will they have a greater population of children that are healthy and who do not need much disease curative services.

“Finally, it has been seen that if you work at the community level and the health system level overall of the population becomes healthier and the cost of the health system decreases so that it is cost effective because from the beginning if they put lot of money in the health system and make it stronger in the community systems where the practices and culture changes towards positive leaning as part of practices that is what will make the generations healthy and the cost of health system will gradually reduce,” Rafique added.

On her part, Ruth Edward, the Acting Director, Monitoring and Evaluation, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, explained that her office is coordinating the review of 2024 UNICEF activities and also developing the 2025-2027 UNICEF activities in Gombe State.

“Our office role is to coordinate what the development partners are bringing into the state. We are coordinating all the sectors of UNICEF,” she said.

Edward noted the importance of aligning UNICEF activities with the priorities of the Gombe State Governor, stating, “We are here to make sure that we prioritise his plans into the work plan that will be developed for the UNICEF,” she said.