KABUL (SW) – Polio vaccination drive has been launched in 32 out of all 34 provinces, confirmed health officials on Monday.
This campaign will continue for four days and in it, 9.2 million children under the age of five will receive the vaccine.
A number of families who have vaccinated their children against polio advise other families to vaccinate their children to prevent their children from contracting polio.
Nazanin, a resident of Kabul, told Salam Watandar: “I have an eight-month-old child, I vaccinate him against polio every time there is a campaign. To prevent polio in children, I recommend every family to give their children under five years of age the polio vaccine every time. Two drops of polio vaccine are necessary for every child.”
Mersal, another resident of Kabul, said: “I have a one-year-old child. Today, the polio vaccine team arrived at our gate and I vaccinated my child to prevent polio in the future. It is the duty of every parent to ensure the future of their child”.
Meanwhile, Nik Wali Shah Momin, head of the Polio Department of the Ministry of Public Health, told Salam Watandar that during the current four-day polio vaccine campaign, children in Helmand, Ghazni and a number of districts in the central provinces are not receiving vaccinations.
“This is a nationwide campaign in the country and our goal is 9.2 million children whose life is less than five years and more than six months, and this campaign will start for them. Except for Ghazni and Helmand, there is a delay of up to a week and we are preparing more. A few provinces such as Bamyan, Daikundi and Ghor are so cold that it is not possible to deliver the vaccine, we will decide later.”
Recently, a number of media outlets have recently reported the possibility of polio transmission by returnees from Pakistan.
The head of the polio department of the Ministry of Public Health says that the genetic structure of the samples registered in the current year in the eastern region is similar to the polio disease in Pakistan.
It should be mentioned that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries where polio has not completely disappeared.
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