Polio vaccination starts today - Targets 4 million children in 8 regions

The Greater Accra Regional Health Service has given an assurance that the polio vaccine that will be administered to children under five years from today to Sunday, October 11, 2020, is not a trial vaccine for COVID-19.

It has, accordingly, asked parents to submit their children for the vaccination exercise — which will be the third round of the polio immunisation campaign by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to get children immunised against the Type Two polio virus.

“People think the vaccine is a trial vaccine for COVID-19, which is never true. As a result, in the September 2020 polio vaccination campaign, they were reluctant to submit their children for the exercise”, said Mrs Eunice Joan Teah Dzagli, the Regional Health Promotion Manager.

“This is a polio vaccine tested and approved. It has nothing to do with COVID-19”, she added.

Mrs Dzagli was addressing a press briefing on the Polio Immunisation Campaign that begins today.

8 Regions, 4 million

The campaign targets to reach over four million children in eight regions.

One million of these children are in the Greater Accra Region, where all the 29 districts would be participating in the exercise.

The other regions participating in the exercise are Eastern, Western, Western North, Volta, Oti, Northern and Upper East.
 
Aside from the polio vaccine, children between the ages of six months and 59 months old will be given Vitamin ‘A’ supplement to, among others, boost their immune system.

Though it will be a house-to-house exercise, health facilities will also administer the vaccines.

Safe vaccine

Mrs Dzagli said over all the years that the polio vaccine had been administered on children, there had never been problems with it.

“It has succeeded in eradicating wild polio. It has been used on over 10 billion children and adults all these years”, she pointed out.

“For us to build the immunity needed to fight the spread of the virus, we need at least 95 per cent and above of the population of children to be fully immunised”, she said.

She said health workers would be equipped with personal protective equipment (PPE) and hand sanitiser to protect both the health workers and the children and their parents during the exercise, stressing that health workers had been advised to strictly observe the necessary precautionary protocols.

The Deputy Director, Public Health at the Regional Health Unit, Dr Luiz Amoussou-Octavia, said the priority was to reduce mortality, mobility and disability due to the polio virus.

Background

In July last year, the polio virus was confirmed in environmental samples taken in Tamale.

Later, a strain was identified at a site at Agbogbloshie in Accra, and later in August, a human confirmation was observed at Chereponi.

From July last year to date, there have been 30 confirmed cases.

Those occurrences triggered immediate response actions which included vaccination campaigns in the Northern, North East, Savannah and the Greater Accra regions.