THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) in partnership with the Ministry of Health has embarked on a zero-dose survey, to identify children who are yet to be vaccinated.
This comes at a time, there has been vaccination hesitancy among residents, with authorities citing religious groups as being at the forefront of hesitancy.
In a statement yesterday, BCC town clerk Christopher Dube said the zero-dose survey will be undertaken in a door-to-door scenario, a move believed to be effective in accounting for the unvaccinated children.
“The City of Bulawayo in conjunction with the Ministry of Health will be conducting a zero-dose survey in all the city’s suburbs. The city is kindly requesting your cooperation with the teams that will gather the information door-to-door from Monday, December 12 2022 to December 30 2022.
“This will establish the number of children who have not received any immunisations below five years in each clinic catchment area,” said Dube.
The Town Clerk further noted that the information will also help in determining the status of the targeted group of children.
“The survey that we have embarked on will also ascertain some of the following among other things the nearest health facilities for the targeted children, health facility of preference be it private or public, immunisation status and age when the vaccines were administered including the nutritional status of the child,” said Dube.
Meanwhile, Dube said the team on the ground will have identification documents, to ensure the programme is authentic.
“Residents are advised that the teams who will be conducting this exercise will have with them identification documents from the health services department to show their authenticity. Queries related to this exercise should be addressed to the director of health services.”
In the recent polio vaccinations, 78 percent of children were immunised while others failed to get vaccinated due to religious objections, which BCC said was mainly coming from Pumula suburb.
