111 million children in four days – West and Central Africa Polio Campaign Enters Decisive Phase

Posted on by

Joint news note: How to meet 111 million children in four days – West and Central Africa Polio Campaign Enters Decisive Phase
Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), WHO, UNICEF

“Health Ministries, UN agencies and communities are uniting with tens of thousands of volunteer immunizers over four days to go door-to-door and hut to hut for a vaccination campaign against polio in 20 African countries starting on 23 March. Across West and Central Africa, over 111.1 million children below the age of five are expected to be vaccinated through this campaign. Nigeria, the only polio endemic country in Africa, aims to get two drops of the oral vaccine into the mouths of 57.7 million children. Nineteen other countries, which are at risk of re-infection, are stepping up efforts to reach nearly 53.3 million children. This gigantic exercise represents a dramatic effort of will by governments and partners, and relies on hundreds of thousands of health workers and volunteers who will be administering the drops to all children under the age of five, irrespective of their previous immunization status…” WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr Luis Sambo said, “The upcoming campaign in West and Central Africa will aim to cover all children, immunized or not, in order to boost their protection levels and deprive the virus of the fertile seedbed on which it depends for survival. This exercise should bring us closer to reaching our goal of interrupting wild polio virus transmission in our region in 2012.”

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) “is spearheaded by national governments, WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF, and supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Since 1988 (the year the GPEI was launched), the incidence of polio has been reduced by more than 99 percent.  At the time, more than 350,000 children were paralyzed every year in more than 125 endemic countries. In 2011, 650 cases have been reported worldwide.  Only three countries remain endemic: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_62054.html