Edo State Government yesterday said it was targeting no fewer than 352,544 children across the three Senatorial districts of the state for the third round of the Big Catch Up (BCU) vaccination exercise.

Mr Kenneth Mac-Fisi, Edo Coordinator for Social and Behavioral Change at UNICEF, made this known during a stakeholders meeting organised in preparation for the exercise scheduled for April 10 to 17.

Mac-Fisi announced that the vaccines were free and intended for children aged zero to 59 months. He noted that the eightday community-based exercise would be conducted across 149 wards in 16 local government areas, with 917 vaccination teams mobilised for the effort.

Mac-Fisi noted that many of the targeted children have a zero-dose status, meaning they have never received any vaccination due to setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic.