Ceasefire for polio immunisation begins on Tuesday

The second of five rounds of polio immunisations to be held this year would begin on Tuesday after Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban Islamic Movement and the opposition Northern Alliance agreed to a week-long ceasefire, UN officials told IRIN on Monday. The ambitious supplementary vaccination programme, targeting more than 5.7 million children, is part of the UN’s global strategy to eradicate polio worldwide by the year 2005. “This ongoing effort demonstrates a serious endeavour on our part to eradicate the disease from Afghanistan as one of the few countries where the wild virus is still found,” UNICEF Senior Programme Officer Solofo Ramaroson told IRIN. “Both sides have committed themselves to the ceasefire, and have called upon their field commanders for full cooperation.” The second three-day immunisation round is set to end on Thursday, to be followed by another national immunisation day (NID) later in May, and then two more, respectively in October and November. The UNICEF/WHO polio immunisation campaign for 2001 is budgeted to cost US $8.3 million, and is being facilitated by numerous NGOs working to raise awareness of the disease among the Afghan population. The ceasefire agreement between Taliban and Northern Alliance forces followed a request by UNICEF and WHO calling on both sides to allow tens of thousands of staff and volunteers to implement the campaign all over Afghanistan, the Office of the United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan said on Friday. Special arrangements had been made to ensure that children of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan and children of families who cross borders during NIDs could be vaccinated, the office said. Earlier, Dr Naveed Sadozai, WHO medical officer for Afghanistan, told IRIN that the planned house-to-house effort to immunise all children under five years of age was a comprehensive one. “You need multiple doses to have a high immunity, which is why we are carrying out this programme again this year, and will continue to do so in the future,” he said. Many children who were not born at the time of last year’s NIDs would be receiving their first immunisation dosage this time round, he added. In October and November 2000, a combination of elements - a ceasefire, additional social mobilisation activities and the adoption of a house-to-house strategy - contributed to a higher vaccination coverage than before, with almost six million Afghan children having been successfully immunised. Ramaroson remained optimistic for the success of the campaign, saying: “The surveillance system established by WHO shows a reduction in the number of confirmed polio cases, despite an increase in the number of surveillance points.” There were 115 confirmed polio cases among children in Afghanistan in 2000, the Office of the United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan reported.