Ceasefire allows polio immunisation to begin

The first of three immunisation rounds to be held this year began on Thursday after Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban Islamic Movement and the opposition Northern Alliance agreed to a week-long ceasefire. The ambitious supplementary vaccine programme, targeting more than 5.7 million children, is part of the UN’s global strategy to eradicate polio throughout the world by the year 2005. “Afghanistan is one of the few countries in the world today where polio cases still occur and continue to cripple children,” UNICEF information officer for Afghanistan, Jet van der Gaag told IRIN. “Last year the commitment to the ceasefire was respected all over the country and we are optimistic this will be the case again this time,” she added. The first three-day immunisation round is set to end on Saturday, and to be followed by two more national immunisation days (NIDs) in April and May. 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 in the Afghan population, Van der Gaag added. 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 an ambitious 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 around, Sadozai added. The Taliban and Northern Alliance have agreed to respect a ceasefire from 13-19 March following a request by UNICEF and WHO, in order to allow tens of thousands of staff and volunteers to carry out the immunisation campaign all over Afghanistan, according to a statement issued by the Office of the Un Coordinator for Afghanistan on Wednesday. In October and November last year, 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. Special efforts are being made this year to ensure that internally displaced children are reached during the immunisation exercise. With the particular strain of wild polio in Afghanistan common also to Pakistan, health workers also emphasise that those people who cross the countries’ borders should be immunised and NIDs will take place in all Afghan districts that border Pakistan. [NIDs were carried out earlier in the year in Pakistan.] Considerable work remains to be done to completely eradicate polio from the world, an outcome that would generate worldwide annual savings of US $1.5 billion (due to cessation of vaccine administration and averted health care costs) that could be used to prevent other diseases in the world, according to Wednesday’s statement from the Office of the UN Coordinator.