Major immunisation drive planned

A major immunisation drive is planned in western Zambia and eastern Angola in response to new polio cases among young Angolan refugees, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF said in a joint statement. "The challenge will be to reach every child in order to contain the virus, including areas that we have not been able to access in the past," said Dr Stella Goings, UNICEF Representative for Zambia. "But in our efforts to reach these unprotected children, we must ensure the safety of the health workers and the volunteers." The statement said that the immunisation campaign was expected to begin in early March targeting all children under five. It added that two joint WHO/UNICEF missions one to Angola and one to Zambia would be joining the respective health ministries to determine if the virus had spread and to help plan the vaccination campaigns. The three cases are the first in the border areas between Angola and Zambia since 1995, the agencies said. According to UNICEF and WHO, the three children were from the same family and aged one, three and six. They were examined in December last year at Mambolomoka, a town in Zambia's Western province near the Angolan border. The children, who had never been vaccinated against polio, had a history of fever and paralysis in their legs. The two UN agencies said that it was standard practice for all Angolan refugees in camps to be immunised against polio and that Zambian health authorities had been "vigilant" in ensuring that children were immunised. They added, however, that because the Angolan/Zambia border was "long and relatively porous, there are logistical challenges to monitoring every border crossing and immunising every child". "WHO and UNICEF have long been concerned about the possibility of circulating wild polio virus in inaccessible areas of Angola and the threat of virus importation to neighbouring countries, due to ongoing conflict and insecurity in eastern Angola," the statement said. The agencies said that an estimated 15 percent of Angolan children have not been immunised, with insecurity hampering surveillance efforts, "making it impossible to confirm whether the polio virus has been circulating in the area". Angola is one of only 10 countries in the world that are thought of as "polio-endemic". In 1999 the country was the site of Africa's worst polio outbreak with 1,103 cases and 89 deaths in the two largest cities, Luanda and Benguela in the south.