Luanda - Luanda province plans to vaccinate about one million and 503 thousand children under five years of age against polio from 28 to 30 of this month, the coordinator of the Vaccination Programme, Felismina Neto, said on Friday.
The campaign, promoted by the Ministry of Health, results from the confirmation of poliovirus, derived from the type 2 vaccine (PVDV2), in environmental samples of sewage water collected in Luanda.
This was confirmed by the World Health Organization Reference Laboratory in South Africa on 25 January 2024.
According to the coordinator, the campaign will take place throughout the territory of Luanda province, on a door-to-door basis and in areas with a higher population concentration, such as stops, borders, markets, churches, nurseries and farms.
She informed that the vaccine will also be available in all private clinics.
She stressed that the ministry intends to exhaust all strategies, so that no child, within the target group, is left out of the campaign, and assured that hard advocacy work has been done, so that the results are satisfactory.
She appealed to parents to take their children for vaccination, regardless of the child's health status and informed thar this vaccine is new and serves to prevent babies from being contaminated with the type 2 virus, which is in the environment,' he clarified.
Due to the confirmation of the poliovirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended, as a matter of urgency, the realization of two rounds of vaccination against Poliomyelitis, to prevent the gains achieved in 2014, with the Certificate of Eradication of the disease in Angola, from being compromised.
Poliomyelitis, also called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute contagious disease caused by the poliovirus, which can infect children and adults through direct contact with feces or secretions eliminated by the mouth of sick people and cause paralysis or not. EVC/OHA/DOJ
