Nationwide vaccination campaign under way

More than 40,000 male and female volunteers have been deployed across Afghanistan in a three-day polio vaccination campaign. The joint government-United Nations campaign, which began on Monday, is expected to reach 7 million children under the age of five and is aimed at making the country polio-free. Afghanistan is among just six countries in the world where polio remains endemic: Nigeria, India, Niger, Somali and Pakistan. The campaign, which is led by the health ministry with support from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), began as health officials confirmed four cases of the disease had been reported in 2005 so far, the same number as last year. “The localised nature of the cases – all have been discovered in the southern border provinces – indicates that Afghanistan is winning the battle against the indigenous polio virus thanks to a massive drive that has seen millions of children vaccinated each year in every community in the country,” UNICEF said in a statement on Thursday. Polio, also called poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by one of three related viruses and can lead to paralysis or even death. Once a person is exposed to polio, it usually takes about three to five days for symptoms to appear. In about 95 percent of polio cases, infection from the polio virus causes no symptoms or serious effects. Paralytic polio is the most serious type of polio. The virus invades the central nervous system and may cause weakness, paralysis, serious breathing problems or death. According to the health ministry, children over six months and under five years will receive vitamin A on top of the polio vaccination in order to help boost resistance to other childhood diseases. “We hope we will not have any incidents of polio next year after completion of this polio vaccination phase in the country,” Abdullah Fahim, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said in the capital Kabul. Child mortality is very high in the war-ravaged country. Afghanistan's first national human development report, released in February 2005, indicated that 20 percent of children die before their fifth birthday, mainly of preventable diseases.