Round two of polio vaccination begins in six provinces

A follow-up round of a polio vaccination campaign on Tuesday entered its second day in six Burundian provinces bordering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). All children five years old and below are being targeted in the provinces of Cibitoke, Bubanza, Bujumbura Urban, Bujumbura Rural, Makamba and Bururi. Vaccinations will also be extended into the provinces of Kayanza and Gitega, where, in 2000, the immunisation coverage rate was below 80 percent. Provisional figures for the first phase of the vaccinations showed that all 627,720 children targeted were vaccinated. This time round, children in the DRC towns of Kiliba and Uvira are also to be vaccinated in Burundi to ensure there is no cross-border contamination. People also move constantly between Zambia and Angola, and, through Lake Tanganyika, between Burundi and Zambia, where, Gitega health officials said, wild polio had been reported. This cross-border movement has led health officials in these countries into undertaking synchronised polio vaccination campaigns. The health officials said they embarked on the second phase of vaccination because of uncertainty about the completeness of the first effort. "All of us worked on the basis of the 1990 population data," one of them said. "But some worked on the premise that the population was increasing by 2.5 percent every year, while others were using a 3-percent yearly increase. This brought about two different coverage rates and, due to this confusion, we decided to do a second phase."