14 million children to be vaccinated

A new polio eradication campaign which aims to achieve a polio-free certification for Ethiopia in 2005 will get under way on 9 November, a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) spokesman told IRIN on Thursday. Afewerk Ayele told IRIN that UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) had organised 51,000 vaccination teams to carry out the campaign, which will aim to vaccinate as many as 14 million children by the year's end. Travelling door-to-door, the vaccination campaign will be the biggest ever in Ethiopia, and will access isolated areas by mule, camel, boat, helicopter and on foot. "We sincerely hope that this campaign will put an end to polio in Ethiopia," Ayele said. In the last year there has been just one case of polio recorded in Ethiopia - a two year-old child from the southern part of the country. One hundred percent vaccination coverage, however, is critical if Ethiopia is to interrupt the transmission of the polio virus in order to qualify for the WHO's target of global polio eradication by 2005. Three years of no circulation of the virus is required to get polio-free certification.