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Health officials have warned that ongoing vaccination campaigns in Somalia, which has seen 202 children infected with polio since July 2005, must be sustained to prevent the disease spreading to neighbouring countries.
"It must be kept in mind that despite all these other emergencies, we still have a funding gap in the polio campaign," said Marjatta Tolvanen-Ojutangas, the head of the health and nutrition unit at the Somalia office of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) on Wednesday. Some US$11 million is required for polio immunisation programmes in Somalia, according to Unicef and the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), which are coordinating immunisation efforts.
"Somalia is potentially one of the worst places from which polio could spread" to other countries in the Horn of Africa, said Tolvanen-Ojutangas. Twenty of the 202 cases of polio in Somalia were reported during the first four months of 2006.
WHO and Unicef launched a polio immunisation campaign targeting 1.4 million children in Somalia in March. Preliminary results have shown that coverage now exceeds 95 percent, according to the agencies. Another three-day immunisation exercise was launched on 2 May.
The first cases of polio to reemerge in Somalia in 2005 ended the country's three year status as polio-free state.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions