Sierra Leone has concluded a four-day
anti-polio campaign with a nationwide mass vaccination exercise.
About 1, 493, 785 children were
targeted in the first round of the Polio campaign planned for 2016 as part of
the Child Health/Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) revitalization plans.
The exercise, which ran from Friday
February 26 to Monday February 29, was supported by the UN agencies WHO and
Unicef.
Officials said that it was part of a
wider effort to rid Africa of the viral disease that affects children and
leaves them paralised.
The last case of Polio on the continent
was recorded on August 11, 2014, and in Sierra Leone it was in July 2010.
Health officials and Unicef, in a joint
statement last Friday, said if no new case of the virus was recorded in the
next 18 months, the continent would be declared Polio free.
“We will soon mark the official end of
the most recent Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and we hope that before too
long we will also be celebrating the end of Polio in Africa,” said Minister of
Health and Sanitation, Dr Abu BakarrFofana, as part of a statement marking
commencement of the exercise. He warned against complacency.
More than 7000 health workers were
deployed across the country for the exercise. The charities MSF, World Vision,
and the SABIN Institute were also backers of the exercise which was funded by
the Global Polio Eradication initiative.
The health workers moved from house to
house to administer doses of the vaccine.
The health authorities also took
advantage of the opportunity to register children who missed out on Birth
Registration.
Defaulter children under 2 years who
missed the vaccination during the Ebola outbreak were also targeted.
Health officials say about 72 percent
of susceptible persons infected with polio have no symptoms, which increased
the chance of spreading the virus.
The safest way to prevent
re-introduction of wild polio virus transmission is to ensure high level of
population immunity through campaigns like these, said Dr.Mariama Murray,
Deputy Programme Manager for EPI.
“If every child is up to date on their
vaccinations it will be an important step in efforts to drastically reduce
child deaths in Sierra Leone,” Geoff Wiffin, Unicef Country Representative,
said.
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