750,000 children vaccinated against polio

Ethiopia has completed the vaccination of 750,000 children against polio as it seeks to eradicate the last traces of the paralysing disease in the country. The campaign comes amid fears that polio could re-emerge in Ethiopia after new cases were discovered close to the border of neighbouring Sudan. Although no case of wild polio virus has been detected since 2001, Ethiopia is still not certified free of the virus. Under World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, a country can only be declared free if no cases of the disease are detected for three years. “Ethiopia is no longer on the list of priority countries,” Bjorn Ljungqvist, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told IRIN. “However, there is the threat of importing wild polio virus from countries still harbouring the virus due to intense transmission in Nigeria and the recent transmission of polio virus to Sudan, which borders Ethiopia.” The four-day polio campaign was launched on Friday in key areas of the Oromia region, around the capital, Addis Ababa. Some 1,250 vaccinators and 3,750 volunteers took part. Dr Femi Oyewole, acting WHO head in Ethiopia, said the country could not afford to be complacent in combating polio. He added that increased vigilance was needed as low immunization coverage posed a “real danger” of importing the disease. The vaccinations were launched as polio immunization campaigns were carried out across Africa and Asia to reach out to more than 300 million children. Fewer than half of children in Ethiopia are immunised against preventable diseases – globally killing some 11 million children before their fifth birthday. The polio virus now circulates in no more than 20 countries, down from 30 in 1999 and 125 in 1988 when the campaign was launched. These are mainly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these areas, national immunisation days and intensive house-to-house campaigns have been conducted to wipe out the virus. Poliomyelitis - polio - is a highly infectious and incurable disease caused by a virus that affects mainly children under three years of age. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, which is usually in the legs. More than 14 million children were vaccinated in Ethiopia in the last two years against the crippling virus. More than 550-million children across the world were vaccinated. WHO, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF spearhead the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, to which the national immunisation days are linked.