By Kuda Pembere
As the Zimbabwean government has taken stock of over 10 million novel oral polio vaccine doses, the Ministry of Health and Child Care commences the national vaccination campaign tomorrow, save for Harare Province currently seized with cholera vaccination, to be delayed three days after other provinces in the country.
Addressing the media during a national Polio update, the National Polio Incident Manager and the National Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) manager Colline Chigodo said the vaccination campaign was given the nod to be rolled out nationwide by the Government.
She said the new vaccine called Novel Oral polio vaccine is stable with no experience of side effects and was given in response to polio type 2 outbreaks safely in other African countries and beyond.
The vaccination campaign is being conducted in all the provinces from 20 to 23 February with the exception of Harare City. Harare City is going to conduct the Novel Oral Polio vaccine campaign from 26 to 29 February 2023 after completing the ongoing Cholera Vaccination.
‘So the campaign is scheduled this week as from tomorrow up to Thursday, 20 to 23 February countrywide with the exception of Harare City. Vaccination for cholera is ongoing in Harare and we don’t want to co-administer both antigens at the same time because we want to monitor the vaccine after it has been given to children, both the cholera vaccine and the novel polio vaccine.
“So Harare is going to vaccinate next week, from 26th to 29th of February. So this campaign is going to be conducted countrywide with the exception of Harare City only. Which means Chitungwiza is vaccinating and other rural provinces and Bulawayo, they are vaccinating from tomorrow up to the 23rd of March.
“So then we are going to have a second round, three weeks after this campaign whereby again all other provinces including Harare Province, Chitungwiza, Bulawayo City are going to conduct their second round mid-March, 19 to 22 March. Then Harare City will follow after that,” Ms Chigodo said.
Over 10 million vaccine doses have been received in the country.
“We are going currently to conduct these two rounds, and they are three weeks apart. So this is the summary which I am giving you.
“We have received a total number of doses of about 10,517,500 for both rounds, round one and round two.
“And these rounds are being conducted in all the provinces. The staff has been trained to provide these oral drops to the children. And advocacy and communication activities are being conducted in all the provinces,” Ms Chigodo said.
She explained that Zimbabwe last faced a polio outbreak in 1998. The Health Ministry has been doing annual monitoring of cases until April last year they activated environmental surveillance. It was through these frequent surveillances that they tracked the circulating vaccine derived polio virus in four sewer sites in Harare and another one in Sanyati last December.
“So, this was initiated in April last year. Then during the course of last year, we started to detect this circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus from those sewages. And these are four sites. The four sites where we are collecting these isolates from the sewages.
“We’ve got the Budiriro sewage site, we’ve got the Mbare sewage site, we’ve got the Sunningdale sewage site, we’ve got the Coroborough in Mafakose. That’s the fourth site. That’s where we are collecting these specimens isolated from those sites. So the country has been collecting these specimens to our virology lab and these specimens are sent to South Africa,” she said.
The country has so far detected 17 circulating derived poliovirus from the four sites.
“And this is an early warning sign to show that some people are shedding these two specimens in the environment, which contains the circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus.
“So, in addition to that, in December, there was one case of a child with a weakness of limb, which was detected in Sanyati District,” said Ms Chigodo.
Ms Chigodo added, “So this is the confirmation that now the virus is circulating among our communities. In addition to that, during the initial investigation within these four sites, specimens were also collected from healthy children around these sites.
“Twenty specimens from each site. So from those sites, two cases, two healthy children tested positive. We recently received the results on Friday last week they tested positive on vaccine-derived poliovirus. But these are healthy children. So now the circulating vaccine derived polio virus or wild poliovirus can be asymptomatic.
“It means if case is paralysed and confirmed polio case it means 199 other contacts will be asymptomatic,” she said.
She explained that this vaccine derived polio occurs in low vaccine coverage areas.
“So this circulating-vaccine-derived polio-virus, they occur in areas where there is low coverage of oral polio vaccine. That is where they start to mutate,” Ms Chigodo said.