Campaign launched to immunise 650,000 children against polio

The re-emergence of polio in Madagascar has forced health authorities to launch a nationwide immunisation campaign covering 650,000 children under the age of five. Two cases of the virus were reported in southern Madagascar in the last few weeks, which officials said had set back eradication efforts by at least three years. A country can only be declared polio-free after an independent committee has certified that there have been no polio cases for three consecutive years. The immunisation drive will be organised in two phases: the first will kick off this week, while the second leg will get underway in early October. The effort is expected cost a total of US $600,000. Around 9,000 health workers and community volunteers will travel door-to-door across the southern region of the country to ensure that hundreds of thousands of children each get two doses of oral polio vaccine. "The southern region is extremely poor, but I think that the reason the cases emerged in this area is simply because of poor coverage - routine immunisation levels were not as high as we wanted, and there had been quite a lot of changes in the personnel who were responsible for the immunisation effort," the UN Children's Fund Country Representative, Barbara Bentein, told IRIN. She added that although the country's surveillance system was adequate, more needed to be done to ensure that stronger monitoring mechanisms were put in place. "When I visited the south yesterday [Monday], there had been - since the outbreak - a greater awareness among health officials of the need to make sure that there are no more cases in the future," Bentein noted.