The ninth round of the national polio immunization was held today. Since July, two cases of the Wild Polio virus were detected within the refugee camps in the health district of Ketté located in the eastern region.
Apart from this case, three cases had already been detected earlier this year and four, the previous year, an alarming situation according to the Government who was convinced that it had eradicated polio from the country.
As an attempt to stop the spread of this disease by December 31, the ninth round of the national immunization days was launched. This project was done in synchronization with the second round of the health of maternal and child nutrition week which starts today and will run till Sunday. The objective is to contribute to the reduction of infant and maternal mortality.
It is therefore in this context that some officials in the ministries of Communication, public health, WHO and UNICEF met on this topic with the national media to inform as many parents on the vaccination campaign against polio.
To this end, they will vaccinate all children aged 0-10 years in the East and Adamaoua regions, those aged 0-59 months in eight other regions of the country and all who fall in this age range in the refugee camps in the East and Adamaoua regions.
According to an official of the MOH, between May and September 2014, 175 health districts out of 181 in the country carried out vaccination campaigns.
What helped Cameroon to reach 78% of children vaccinated against 3.2% of unvaccinated children, against 5.2% at the beginning of the year.
However, much remains to be done. And to achieve the goals, adequate measures have been taken by Dr. Désiré Nolna, Deputy permanent Secretary of the expanded Programme on immunization in order to reach the percentage of 1% of unvaccinated children.
This is inter alia to vaccinate children who were not during the last campaign in 13 health districts, to strengthen the capacity of health personnel, to a better adhesion of the communication. Some of the causes of the lack of vaccination was lack of information by the parents, the absence of children, refusal, the omission of vaccinators and houses not visited. The vaccination campaign ends next Sunday.
