The Zambian government on Wednesday kicked off an oral polio vaccination campaign aimed at vaccinating about 3.8 million children aged below five years, reported CGTN Africa.
The first of the four-round vaccination campaigns will be done in three of the country’s 10 provinces, namely Lusaka, Eastern, and Muchinga, representing 30 high-priority districts and targeting to reach 1.2 million children.
The vaccination campaign follows the outbreak of polio in neighboring Malawi where a three-year-old girl in the Lilongwe district was paralyzed due to the infection. It is the first such case in the country in 30 years, and the first in Africa since the region was declared free of indigenous wild poliovirus in 2020.
The outbreak prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to instruct all countries surrounding Malawi to conduct such campaigns.
Nathan Bakyata, the WHO representative in Zambia, said the campaign in Zambia will be rolled out in subsequent rounds in all the 10 provinces.
He said the WHO is committed to supporting the Zambian government in the campaign and has joined efforts with other partners.
Noala Skinner, the representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Zambia, noted that the polio outbreak in Malawi was the first in Africa in more than five years.
“We need to stop this virus in its tracks before it causes further harm to children,” she said.
Skinner said Zambia and other African countries have all shown commitment to the goal of eradicating polio, adding that this requires concerted efforts from all partners.
Skinner said the UNICEF has procured 5.9 million doses of polio vaccine for the Zambian vaccination campaign to cover the first and second rounds.
The WHO’s mass polio vaccination campaign aims to vaccinate over 23 million children against wild poliovirus type 1 using over 80 million doses of the bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine. The vaccination campaign will be conducted in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
