Uganda is set to immunize over 8 million children below the age of five against polio, the Ministry of Health said Monday. Immaculate Ampeire, a senior medical officer in charge of immunization and vaccines at the ministry, told Xinhua in an interview that the exercise will be conducted door-to-door countrywide from Jan. 14 to 16. Local council leaders, village health teams, and health officials will move house to house administering the vaccine, she said About 8.8 million children under five will be vaccinated with novel oral polio vaccines (nOPV2), Ampeire said.
"Currently we have about 10 million doses of polio vaccines that will only cover the first round of the campaign. We hope to get more doses once we are done with the first round," she said, noting that the second round would take place as soon as more funds are secured. Ampeire urged efforts to ensure that all children are vaccinated against polio. She said vaccinated children will be marked and their households numbered.
Last August, Uganda announced that there was a polio outbreak in the country after samples on fecal matter collected in the capital Kampala tested positive. The ministry of health warned at the time that it was the rare wild polio virus type 2, whose vaccine was withdrawn from the country's routine immunization exercises in 2016.
The virus type, according to the ministry, is the most virulent of the three types, 1, 2, and 3. The resurgence was attributed to the reduced routine immunization in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Uganda was certified polio-free in October 2006 by the World Health Organization (WHO) after having reported no indigenous polio cases for 10 years.
According to the WHO, polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that mainly affects children under five years old. The virus is transmitted by the fecal-oral route and by aerosol droplets. Ampeire said many people who are infected with poliovirus do not become sick and have no symptoms.
"However those who become ill develop paralysis, which can sometimes be fatal," she said. "I appeal to parents to bring their children below 15 years (to hospital) once they develop such symptoms."
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