Zimbabwe is set to join four other southern African countries as the region intensifies its immunisation drive to halt an outbreak of the wild poliovirus, the World Health Organisation announced on Friday.
WHO’s Africa polio programme coordinator Modjirom Ndoutabe said Zimbabwe would join Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia in a mass vaccination campaign to protect under-five children and halt the debilitating wild poliovirus type 1 from spreading.
Although Zimbabwe does not share a border with Malawi, frequent cross-border movements heighten the risk of wild polio outbreak.
Ndoutabe said Zimbabwe would conduct two more rounds later this year to ensure full vaccination coverage of all under-five children.
“Every effort is being made to vaccinate every eligible child. This is a dangerous disease with no cure, but full vaccination can prevent paralysis” Ndoutabe said.
Mozambique on Thursday kicked off the third round of vaccination against wild polio, while neighbouring Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia are expected to embark on the third phase of their own mass vaccination campaigns in the coming weeks.
Around 36 million vaccine doses have been administered by the four countries in the first two rounds.
The mass vaccination campaigns were launched after an outbreak in Malawi in March, while Mozambique detected a case in May.
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