26 July 2010 - More than 20,000 volunteers and health workers are going house-to-house to administer two drops of the oral polio vaccine to children under the age of five in 14 provinces of Afghanistan.

The three-day campaign, Sub-national Immunization Days or SNIDS, kicked off yesterday. It is part of a national effort led by the Ministry of Public Health with support from the UN World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other partners to vaccinate 7.7 million children across the country by December.

“We hope that religious scholars, community representatives, parents and ordinary people will help us achieve our target to eliminate polio from the region,” Dr Rahmathullah “Kamwak”, the head of WHO in the southern province of Kandahar, told journalists at an inauguration ceremony also attended by the head of the provincial public health department Dr Abdul Qayom “Pokhla.”

A dozen confirmed polio cases have been reported in the country, mostly concentrated in the south where fighting has limited access to more than 100,000 children, according to a statement released today by the WHO.

In the east, 13 volunteers participating in the campaign were abducted by anti-Government forces in Kunar province. Aid organizations continued the vaccination campaign after a security assessment.

Meanwhile, in Qasaba on the outskirts of the city of Jalalabad, three volunteers recruited by the Ministry of Public Health were spotted by UNAMA knocking on doors.

“This is the second (polio) campaign I am involved in and it’s going smoothly,” said Fariba, one of the volunteers, her voice coming from beneath a blue burqa.

She said her team administered 207 life-saving drops yesterday and 130 today.

Three of the recipients were children of Faizullah, a 35-year-old father who works in a nearby flour mill.

Faizullah said he gets his youngest children vaccinated against polio whenever there is a campaign, “I don’t want to see my kids handicapped.”

Eradicating polio in Afghanistan is challenging because of the insecurity and the continued population movements from polio endemic areas to polio free areas and vice-versa, said Dr Khushhal Khan Zaman, the head of WHO in Jalalabad.

As a step towards greater regional cooperation, a synchronized campaign against polio has been launched in bordering Pakistan’s tribal areas which account for the greatest population movement.

By Mujeeb Rahman in Kandahar and Tilak Pokharel in Jalalabad, UNAMA