To build a world where future generations are free of polio, much work remains, all of it needing continued political and financial support. Today, the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) will start the vaccination of children aged 0-59 months with the Bivalent Polio Vaccine (BPV).
Harold Thomas, MoHS Communications Lead for Public Health and National Emergency Operations Centre, said they are working on ending the polio by finding the last virus and vaccinating every last child.
The BPV contains two strains of polio type 1 and 3; the type 2 strain is not circulating. “We are targeting all under-fives throughout the country; we are also giving Vitamin A supplement and Albendazole for deworming.”
During this period they will be sensitising parents who are defaulting in continuing the routine vaccine for their babies. “We are at the end game towards polio eradication all over the world; the country has a provisional polio free certificate.”
But in 2010, Thomas said that a case of the polio virus was imported from Guinea, seven years down the line no case has been reported, so the Ministry is joining other countries in final eradication. “We do not want any surprise case of polio virus,” he said.
In addition, they are doing Acute Flattened Paralysis (AFP) surveillance for children under fifteen years. “We are looking for any paralysis in their upper or lower limbs. We have been sending specimen consistently to the accredited laboratories in Abidjan and Dakar for follow up, and all results have been proven to be negative,” he bluffed.
This is the third round of the national immunisation days, which will end on the 30 October 2017. The vaccination is synchronised across west and central Africa and the final round for this year will be in November and will coincide with the global Child Health Week (‘Mami ehn pikin well bodi’).
In 2016, the country successfully switched from trivalent oral polio vaccine to bivalent polio vaccine.
World Polio Day, 24 October, the WHO says is an opportunity to recognize the work of more than 20,000 other unsung heroes working to eradicate polio around the world.
Polio is a virus that can cause incurable paralysis. But it presents the global community with a unique opportunity to eradicate a human disease for just the second time in history, after smallpox.
In 1988, when WHO became part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, polio paralysed 10 children for life every 15 minutes, in nearly every country in the world. Each case was entirely preventable. In 2017, so far, 12 cases of polio have been reported in just two countries. In the intervening years, the polio eradication infrastructure has been at the heart of efforts to increase equitable access to health services for every last child, even in the most remote or marginalized areas.
Today, only three endemic countries remain, which have never stopped polio – Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Even within these countries, the virus is cornered into fewer districts than ever before, with just 15 districts infected since last World Polio Day, compared to 29 between October 2015 and 2016.
ZJ/26/10/17
By Zainab Joaque
October Friday 27, 2017.
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