Continent-wide polio immunisation drive begins

A mass polio immunisation campaign began on Friday across Africa, targeting 100 million children, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported. The 22-nation synchronised campaign, dubbed the Coast-to-Coast Polio Drive, comes as reports from Ethiopia indicated that a child there had contracted polio, the first case in the country in four years. UNICEF said the polio drive was the first in a series of 2005 campaigns to stamp out polio in Africa, "which saw a fierce resurgence last year, endangering global eradication efforts". UNICEF said, "With polio now in its low-transmission season, the next few months are critical to stopping the virus." Polio is spread by faecal-oral contact and can be prevented by an oral vaccine. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia and Eritrea, on the southern and eastern edges of the epidemic, are among the countries joining the campaign. In the west, UNICEF said, Côte d’Ivoire was rejoining the effort for the first time since civil unrest halted activities in November 2004, causing months of concern after the country was reinfected early in the regional epidemic. "By reaching children cut off from the eradication effort by insecurity and the threat of violence, African leaders have a real opportunity to halt polio's advance," Dr Ezio Murzi, UNICEF regional director for West and Central Africa, was quoted as saying. UNICEF also reported that in Sudan, health officials were cooperating to immunise children in the north and south. Ethiopia, Sudan's neighbour, was concentrating on activities along its northern and western borders, where the new case was found, UNICEF said. Sudan convened a meeting in early February for nine neighbouring countries to discuss cross-border immunisation coordination. "In a reminder of the ease with which the virus travels, two recent cases in Saudi Arabia appear to be related to a virus originating in Nigeria and entering via Sudan," UNICEF said. "Nigeria accounts for over 60 percent of cases worldwide." The UN World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa, Dr Luis Sambo, said: "Eradication in Africa requires not only reaching all children in the newly-infected areas, but most importantly, immunising every child in those countries which have never interrupted transmission - Nigeria and Niger." UNICEF quoted health officials as saying that progress made since the first response to the outbreak in Africa – massive co-ordinated immunisation campaigns in October and November 2004 – had been positive, but tenuous. It said success in the second phase of this eradication effort, coupled with improved access to routine immunisation, was critical to stopping the epidemic. To finance this year's immunisation rounds, US $75 million would be needed by July and some $200 million would be required in 2006, UNICEF said. During the campaign, UNICEF said, vaccinators would be delivering vitamin A drops with the polio vaccine in many places – an immunity-boosting strategy that has saved some 1.2 million lives over 12 years. It said further mass polio vaccination campaigns in Africa were scheduled for April and May and again in late 2005. WHO, Rotary International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF are the organisations spearheading the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, launched in 1988 to help eradicate the disease. [For more information, see: www.polioeradication.org]