Polio campaign shows it is possible to treat all in Angola – UN health chief

Successful nationwide polio and measles immunization campaigns in Angola, which only four years ago had the largest recorded polio outbreak in Africa, show it is possible to provide health care for all in a country that was torn by almost three decades of civil war, according to the new head of the United Nations health agency.

"Reaching children is no longer the main problem," Lee Jong-wook, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said today on his first national visit since taking office last month. "What needs to be done now is to deliver more proven health interventions, including routine immunization, improved care for mothers and newborns and surveillance and treatment for people with HIV/AIDS.

“Several million Angolans are now resettling into their home areas. Now is the time to bring health services to them by rebuilding the infrastructure at communal level," he added, referring to the more than 4.5 million Angolans displaced during the war.

Dr. Lee, participating in the latest stage of the national polio immunization days, chose Angola for his first visit to demonstrate his commitment to working with countries facing extremely difficult health issues, including high rates of malaria, growing incidence of HIV and a health system working with extremely limited resources.

The three-day polio campaign aims to vaccinate more than 5 million children under five against the disease. Using cars, bicycles, canoes, motorcycles, helicopters and travelling by foot, tens of thousands of vaccinators have in the last year successfully reached more than 5 million children with polio vaccine three times.

As a result, no cases of polio have been found in Angola since September 2001. By contrast, the country had the largest recorded outbreak of polio on the African continent in 1999, when more than 1,000 children were paralyzed.

With 2.4 million displaced people already back in their homes, WHO and its partners have been providing basic health kits, supporting immunization services including routine immunization, the polio and measles national immunization campaigns, and lab supplies as well as drugs for malaria, TB, leprosy, trypanosomiasis, onchocerciasis as the government plans resettlement of 2 million more people.