THE Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) will from 27 to 30 October, 2022 kick-start the first round of a nationwide supplementary Polio immunisation drive as the country scales-up disease and outbreaks preparedness and prevention in children.
By Michael Gwarisa
The second round will start from December 1 up to December 4 and will be targeting children from Zero to five years. The supplementary vaccination will target children within the mentioned age range regardless of previous vaccination status. Even though Zimbabwe was certified Polio free in 2005, there have been cases of new Polio infection in the African region with health authorities in Malawi having declared an outbreak of wild polio-virus type 1 after a case was detected in a young child in the capital Lilongwe, putting the African region on including Zimbabwe on high alert.
Speaking at the ongoing Media training on Outbreaks and Immunisation being hosted by the Ministry of Health and Child Care, EPI Manager, Ms Collen Chigodo said the Polio disease was coming back and there was need to address the occurrence of the health issues.
There are four strategies of preventing the spread of the Polio virus. Firstly, we need to have a high routine vaccination coverage with oral polio vaccine and inactivated Polio vaccine. Oral Polio vaccines are those drop we give to children at six weeks post-delivery, 10 weeks, 14 weeks and 18 months. The second strategy is to implement high quality supplementary immunisation dates.
“We have got our normal immunisation schedule which is there within our child health cards. The supplementary one is an extra dose because we don’t k now which child has seroconverted. We want to build a wall in Zimbabwe and prevent these diseases from infecting children. So we are going to have this campaign. This supplementary dose of is going to be given to children from 27 October to 30 October. We are going to conduct a mass vaccination campaign in the country targeting all children under the age of five years irrespective of vaccination status,” said Ms Chogodo.
She added that Zimbabwe is at high risk and each and every child in the country is at high of the Polio disease that why Zimbabwe has adopted the strategy of vaccinating of all children from zero up to five years with Oral Polio Drops (OPV) so that we prevent this diseases and avert the paralysis in our children.
“As Zimbabwe, we are going to roll out vaccination of polio. We are going to have mobile teams who will move from area to area trying to reach those hard to reach areas. There is resurfacing of these vires even after they have been eradicated in the Afro Region because they were not eradicated globally.”
Africa was declared free of indigenous wild polio in August 2020 after eliminating all forms of wild polio from the region. Laboratory analysis shows that the strain detected in Malawi is linked to the one that has been circulating in Sindh Province in Pakistan. Polio remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As an imported case from Pakistan, this detection does not affect the African region’s wild poliovirus-free certification status.
She added that vaccination coverage for all antigens which prevent all types of diseases including Polio in the Afro region was on a downward trend due to other emerging health outbreaks such as COVID-19, disruptions to health services as well as vaccination objectors and hard to reach populations.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis within hours. The virus is transmitted from person-to-person mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, through contaminated water or food, and multiplies in the intestine. While there is no cure for polio, the disease can be prevented through administration of a simple and effective vaccine.
