Around 8.9 million young children received anti-polio drops in UN-backed campaign

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7 May 2014

Around 8.9 million young children received anti-polio drops in UN-backed campaign

KABUL - As part of a United Nations-supported nationwide campaign, around 8.9 million children under five years of age have been administered anti-polio vaccine drops around Afghanistan.

The campaign, implemented by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in cooperation with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), started on 4 May and continued for three consecutive days in all 398 districts of the country. The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, formally inaugurated the national campaign at a launch in Kabul on 4 May 2014.

“A total of 872 District Coordinators, 4,666 Cluster Supervisors and 52,337 Volunteers were mobilized to vaccinate the children from 0 to 59 months old with the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV),” according to WHO’s anti-polio team deputy leader, Dr. Mehmet Akif.

The campaign comes around a week after Afghanistan took part in an informational session of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee – convened by the WHO’s Director-General – concerning the international spread of wild poliovirus in late April. Other countries which took part included Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Syrian Arab Republic, among others.

In Afghanistan, the most recent polio case was detected in the Mohmandara district of the eastern province of Nangarhar on 22 February this year, in an 11-month-old baby who had shown signs of the onset of paralysis.

According to the MoPH, the joint efforts of the Afghan Government and the international community helped to bring down the number of polio cases from 80 in 2011 to 14 in 2013. In the first four months of the current year, just three positive cases of polio have been reported in Badakhshan, Laghman and Kunar provinces, all located in the country’s east.

Dr. Akif said that anti-polio teams went door to door around the country, administering the OPV as well as vitamin A doses to children aged between six and 59 months.

“This was the second nationwide campaign this year to protect children under five years of age from the crippling disease,” Dr. Akif said. He added that “the recent natural disaster-affected areas were specifically targeted to protect children from any risk of polio,” referring to parts of Afghanistan which have been dealing with the impact of severe flooding and landslides.

Both WHO and UNICEF have provided technical support to the MoPH in the areas of social mobilization, communications, vaccine supplies, training of field workers and monitoring and evaluation activities.

During the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee’s informational session on 28-29 April, the WHO Secretariat provided an update on and assessment of recent progress in stopping endemic and imported polioviruses and the international spread of wild polioviruses in 2014 as of 26 April.

After discussion and deliberation on the information provided, and in the context of the global polio eradication initiative, the Committee advised that the international spread of polio to date in 2014 constitutes an "extraordinary event" and a public health risk to other States for which a coordinated international response is essential.

“If unchecked, this situation could result in failure to eradicate globally one of the world’s most serious vaccine-preventable diseases,” WHO said in a statement on Monday, adding that it was the unanimous view of the Committee that the conditions for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern had been met and that a coordinated international response was deemed essential to stop the international spread of wild poliovirus and to prevent new spread with the onset of the high transmission season in May/June 2014.

“The consequences of further international spread are particularly acute today given the large number of polio-free but conflict-torn and fragile States which have severely compromised routine immunization services and are at high risk of re-infection. Such States would experience extreme difficulty in mounting an effective response were wild poliovirus to be reintroduced. As much international spread occurs across land borders, WHO should continue to facilitate a coordinated regional approach to accelerate interruption of virus transmission in each epidemiologic zone,” WHO said in its statement.

“The over-riding priority for all polio-infected States,” the UN health agency added, “must be to interrupt wild poliovirus transmission within their borders as rapidly as possible through the immediate and full application in all geographic areas of the polio eradication strategies, specifically: supplementary immunization campaigns with oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), surveillance for poliovirus, and routine immunization.”

For countries infected with wild poliovirus but not currently exporting – which include Afghanistan – the Committee provided advice to the WHO Director-General for her consideration to reduce the international spread of wild poliovirus. The advice includes an official declaration, at the level of head of state or government, that the interruption of poliovirus transmission is a national public health emergency, as well as encourage residents and long-term visitors to receive a vaccine dose four weeks to 12 months prior to international travel.