Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Dakar (Agenzia Fides) – The vaccination campaign against polio, which had been planned in the city of Jos, involved in serious incidents of violence, has been postponed to March 13, due to conflict and a strike of health care workers. "We need more time to plan due to the changes after the first episodes of violence in the country in January," said a statement from Matthew Dabup, head of the immunization campaign against polio of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The Organization has launched a training course for health care workers who have not joined the strike in the Plateau State. The IFRC is one of the agencies engaged in a campaign that provides weekly regional vaccination against polio at least 85 million children in West Africa. The Red Cross has estimated that in Nigeria, in January, following the clashes in Jos, about 20 thousand people were turned away.
The strategy of the World Health Organization expects to reach as many children as possible while continuing to protect health professionals (about 200,000 people), to vaccinate 43 million children under five years of age, who are the most vulnerable to infection. In Jos, the goal is to vaccinate 215,000, as reported by official estimates, although the actual number is higher, after 300,000 were vaccinated in December 2009. Nigeria has become the epicenter of the epidemic in the region, after the one that occurred in the second half of 2008. After several rounds of vaccinations, in 2009 the number of reported cases in the country has decreased by almost half. In recent years, the neighboring West African countries stopped their vaccination campaigns, making children vulnerable to new infection in 2008. Even Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo have had cases of polio in the last 12 months. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 10/3/2010)
