Thousands of South Sudanese children to benefit from UN polio vaccine scheme

Hundreds of thousands of children are benefiting from a United Nations-backed polio vaccination campaign in a northern state of South Sudan, the world’s newest country.

The four-day campaign, which ends tomorrow, is part of a nationwide effort to curb the disease and was launched by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), healthy ministry officials, and other partners.

This is the fourth and final campaign this year and it is targeting over 370,000 children below the age of five. The previous three campaigns took place in February, March and November and have reached some 3.2 million children.

“Our target for the last three exercises this year was to immunize 376,857 children under five years of age,” said Paulo Okech Ajak, manager of WHO’s Expanded Program for Immunization in Upper Nile state. “For February, we reached 100 per cent; March, 101 per cent; and November, 102 per cent. We also expect this one to exceed the target.”

Polio re-emerged in South Sudan in April 2008, but after an intensive vaccination campaign, no new cases have been reported since June 2009. “The polio virus has been kicked out from not only Upper Nile state but South Sudan as a whole,” said WHO Director for South Sudan Fazal Ather.

UNICEF state team leader David Igulu said the agency had been supporting the Ministry of Health with routine and national immunization campaigns against the disease.

“We have supported the Government in the provision of vaccines, solar powered fridges for proper storage and safety of vaccines in remote areas, training of staff and social mobilization – for example, using Radio Miraya [a UN-backed radio station] and other mediums of reaching out to the people to create awareness of the disease,” he said.

A highly infectious disease caused by a virus, polio invades the nervous system and leads to irreversible paralysis in one out of 200 cases. Only four countries – Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan – remain polio-endemic today, and the number of cases has declined drastically in the past 25 years.