CAIRO,
October 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In the biggest-ever
polio eradication campaign in Africa, the World Health Organization
launched Friday, October 8, a wide-scale campaign to vaccinate 80
million children in Africa against polio.
The
largest immunization campaign aims to vaccinate around 80 million
children under five years old in 23 African countries in just four
days against the potentially crippling disease of the polio.
Although
the virus could be easily prevented, many children in the poor
continent are still face the risk of the infliction, amid less
international attention.
Around
one million health workers, religious and traditional chiefs, teachers
and volunteers run by the WHO, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
and other international parties, will go house-to-house and
village-to-village to vaccinate every child under the age of five
years.
“We
are determined and we want to reach every child in each home even
where conflicts are still raging,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted
Rima Salah, the regional head of UNICEF.
“We
got the support of religious chiefs and we launched an awareness
campaign for the people. This is why we believe we can eradicate the
polio virus in Africa,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted Rima
Salah, regional head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
for central and west Africa.
The
worldwide campaign is coincided with a similar one in Asia to immunize
170 million children in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Polio
Spread
The
UNICEF regional head said all available tools will be used to
vaccinate the targeted 80 million African children.
“We
will use helicopters in Liberia and Sierra Leone, camels in Mauritania
and boats in coastal countries,” Salah added.
The
campaign mainly is meant for keeping off the spread of polio in the
African countries as 90% of polio cases discovered this year have been
in Africa, with some areas seeing near epidemic rates of transmission.
“For
the next few months Africa really faces the risk of the largest
epidemic of polio in the recent history," said Salah.
“It
is threatening thousands of children and jeopardizing our common
investment in a polio-free world.”
Eleven
cases of the crippling disease have been recently detected in the
war-torn Darfur and in the capital Khartoum.
“Armed
conflict has contributed to the re-infection by the wild polio virus
in Darfur that has now spread to the capital city, Khartoum",
said WHO Representative Guido Sabatinelli.
Sudan
had been declared in 2001 a polio-free but the cross-border movement
of refugees between Darfur and neighboring Chad had re-introduced the
virus.
“Conflict
in the Darfur region ... where the first polio case made its
appearance, prevented the immunization of all children under the age
of five in earlier campaigns,” the WHO said in a statement.
