The United Nations plans to vaccinate about 2.9 million children in Malawi against polio after the southern African country declared an outbreak of the disease last month.
UNICEF country head for Malawi, Rudolf Schwenk said the UN agency would procure and distribute 6.9 million polio vaccine doses for approximately 2.9 million children under the age of five in Malawi.
“The resurgence of the wild poliovirus in Malawi, decades after it was last detected is cause for serious concern. Vaccination is the only way to protect the children of Malawi from this crippling disease which is highly infectious,” Schwenk said in a statement on Thursday.
The planned mass vaccination exercise is in response to a polio outbreak as announced by Malawi’s Ministry of Health on 17 February after tests showed that the strain was linked to one circulating in Pakistan, where polio is still endemic.
The first vaccine shipment is expected to arrive in the country ahead of the first immunisation campaign which is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks.
It takes multiple doses of the polio vaccine to achieve full immunisation against polio, with the targeted children expected to receive four rounds of the vaccine, regardless of prior vaccination status.
Health authorities have activated surveillance measures in Malawi and neighbouring countries to detect any other potential cases of the disease that affects the nervous system and usually causes total paralysis.
As an epidemic-prone, highly contagious disease, polio can spread easily through the movement of people from endemic to polio-free areas.
JN/APA