500,000 children targeted in anti-polio campaign

Burkina Faso and Niger are to conduct a joint campaign to vaccinate at least 500,000 children aged 12 months to five years, officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, told IRIN. The first phase of the cross-border campaign, which targets 512,906 children, is due to be conducted from 1 to 7 August. The other phases will be run over four months. The children will include 218,265 from Burkina Faso and 291,641 from Niger. The decision to administer the vaccines was taken after a child was found infected with polio in the northern Burkina Faso district of Seba, close to Niger, officials said on Monday. Investigations by WHO confirmed that the child had left Niger already infected and had visited a health center in Burkina Faso seeking treatment. Before that no polio case had been reported in Burkina Faso for four years. "We were in the phase in which a country that has not had a case for a given number of years can be declared free of polio," WHO's Chantal Kambire said in Ouagadougou. "But one case can jeopardise all efforts and gains made so far." Officials from the two countries and WHO met on Friday at Torodi, Niger, and agreed to vaccinate children up to five years of age in all health districts close to the border to avoid any possible spread of the virus, WHO said. The vaccination will be conducted in the districts of Seba, Gorom and Dori in northwestern Burkina Faso, Fada and Diapaga in the northeast, and Kolo, Say and Tera in Niger. Burkina Faso had already vaccinated 2.5 million children by 2001 as part of a "kick polio out of Africa" campaign that has made anti-polio vaccines available to millions of children in Africa since 1988.