2nd Round polio vaccination ends

The second round of the polio vaccination which started from (October 6), to Sunday, October 9, 2022, across the country has successfully come to an end.

This round was targeted at over 6.9 million children under the age of five.

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, at the start of the exercise said the aim of the campaign was to stop the local transmission of the polio virus Type Two, maintain high population immunity, strengthen surveillance on polio disease and prevent further polio outbreaks in the country.

The campaign was on the theme, “Kick Polio out of Ghana, vaccinate your child now”.

It was done in collaboration with Global Polio Eradication Initiative, World Health Organisation, UNICEF and other development partners.

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye explained that the first vaccination, which took place last month, September 1- 4, targeted 6.3 million children but they were able to actually vaccinate nearly 6.6 million children.

He noted that the national vaccination campaign against polio followed laboratory confirmation of polio events from some environmental surveillance sites as well as two polio cases in the country.

The GHS Director-General said polio outbreaks required vaccination response with an appropriate type-specific polio vaccine within a defined period after laboratory confirmation in order to break the transmission.

“Ghana is, therefore, responding aggressively to the outbreaks with response actions such as enhanced active surveillance activities and two rounds of nationwide vaccination campaign, the first of which was completed in September 2022,” he stated.

He said trained immunization teams were to go from house to house and other temporary health posts to immunise all children, including newborns.

“The teams have been trained to ensure optimal infection prevention, including COVID-19 prevention protocol,” he added.

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye advised parents to continually attend child welfare clinics to ensure that their children received all the necessary vaccines and other packages of intervention that promoted healthy childhood.