The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that two million children continue to remain out of school in the country’s North-East region.

The out-of-school children are from the insurgency-affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe of the region. UNICEF’s Chief of Maiduguri Field Office, Joseph Senesie, raised the alarm yesterday at a media dialogue on Journalism Ethics and Child Rights (JECR) reporting in Damaturu, Yobe State.

According to him, training and retraining of journalists are important to stay ahead of a crucial profession in the media. Lamenting the increasing rate of children that are out-of-school in the region, Senesie stated: “From nutrition to education and sanitation, UNICEF is at the forefront of giving children affected by conflict a voice over their fundamental rights to education, health and protection.”

The Maiduguri Chief Field Office further revealed that the UN agency also supported the life-saving treatment of about 600,000 acutely malnourished children in North-East Nigeria.

Similarly, Senesie added that 1.2 million children were immunised with the pentavalent vaccine, while 1.6 million people received the cholera vaccine.

Other life-saving interventions in the region, he added, include the over half a million children below five years, supported with birth registrations that would enable them to have access to education, health and protection.

ALSO, UNICEF has stressed the need for the federal and state governments to adequately fund health insurance equity to fully capture children, particularly the underprivileged.

The Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF Nigeria, Mohamed Okorie, stated this during the South-West Regional Health Insurance Conference held in Akure, Ondo State capital, with the theme, “Attaining Universal Health Coverage Through a Strengthened Health Insurance Scheme.”

According to Okorie, during the conference, convened by the DAWN Commission, the need for all children to be covered with a scheme that is sustainable, particularly one that serves as a gateway to achieving all other rights of children came to the fore.

While harping on regional integration health insurance, the UNICEF specialist maintained that barriers to health coverage outside one’s state, in terms of health coverage, will be eliminated.

He said: “For us (UNICEF), it’s very important. And why is health insurance important for us? Because one of the first rights of a child is the right to health. And when we talk about health, we’re referring to universal health coverage, where a child gets all the health needs, not based on ability to pay, but based on need.”