Over 8.7 million children will benefit from the second Polio Vaccination campaign that will start in August this year following a successful first vaccination campaign that was held in March this year. Dr. Driwale Alfred, the Program Manager, UNEPI who was speaking at the handover of 12.9 million doses of Novel Oral Polio vaccines at National Medical Stores in Entebbe thanked UNICEF for coordinating the global logistics for the vaccines and urged the public to be co-operative and compliant during the second vaccination campaign.
I would like to thank the frontline health workers who spent time looking for children with paralysis, children below the age of 5 years who have paralysis of their limbs, and taking rigorous steps to ensure that the children are investigated to keep the country safe from cases of Polio. We (Ministry of Health) are increasing sensitivity of the surveillance system and we are now looking for particles of polio germs in the environment, Dr. Driwale said.
Dr. Driwale added;
The Standard practice for Polio vaccination is to go home to home and find the children in the home setting so that we don’t miss anyone of them. We want to communicate and alert the public that we are going to resume the vaccination exercise in August and we shall rely on your usual cooperation and compliance.
On his part, the UNICEF representative, Dr. Munir Safieldin revealed that Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Health is looking forward to the second round of polio vaccination and added that to fully protect children against Polio, two rounds of vaccinations are needed.
Dr. Merdard Bitekyerezo who represented the National Medical Stores Board Chairman thanked Centre for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and UNICEF for donating the Polio Vaccines and revealed that National Medical Stores is committed to storing the vaccines well under appropriate temperatures and will also ensure that they are distributed efficiently.
