Botswana will next week launch two rounds of house-to-house polio vaccination campaign targeting children up to seven years old across the country, the Ministry of Health announced on Thursday.
The campaign is set to run from 23-26 February and 30 March-2 April in all districts across the country.
“This is a public health response to the circulating Vaccine Derived Poliovirus Type 2 (cVOPV2) that was detected in the country,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said the vaccination campaign is expected to “prevent the spread of the virus to vulnerable children since unvaccinated children are at high risk of polio infection.”
Botswana would join other southern African countries such as Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe in a mass vaccination drive to protect young children and halt the debilitating wild poliovirus type 1 from spreading across the region.
Although Botswana does not share a border with Malawi – where an outbreak was reported in March 2022 – experts have warned that all countries in the region are at risk due to frequent cross-border movements.
Currently endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, wild poliovirus type 1 is highly infectious and largely affects children younger than five years and can cause life-long paralysis.
JN/APA