IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Polio vaccination campaign gets under way
1 March 2005


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]

KABUL, 1 March (IRIN) - The Afghan government, working in conjunction
with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), launched a three-day national
polio vaccination campaign on Tuesday in an effort to finally eradicate
the virus from the country.

An estimated 5.3 million Afghan children under the age of five will
receive the life-saving polio vaccine under the National Immunisation
Days (NID) campaign.

Afghanistan is among only seven countries in the world, along with
Nigeria, India, Egypt, Niger, Somali and Pakistan, where polio remains
endemic.

"The government and UNICEF [the UN Children's Fund] are hoping that this
year is the year when there will be no new cases in polio," Edward
Carwardine, a UNICEF spokesman, told IRIN in Kabul.

Led by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), with support from UNICEF
and the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 35,000 health workers
will administer the oral vaccine across the country.

"We continue to hope that this will be the year that we break the
transmission. Of course it will depend on the number of children who are
vaccinated and the continued efforts throughout the year to get newborn
children vaccinated against polio."

According to UNICEF, Afghanistan has already made steady progress
towards the eradication of polio over the last three years. In 2004,
there were just four reported cases of polio compared to 10 in 2002.

At the same time as receiving the polio vaccine, children will also get
vitamin A supplements, which help to boost resistance to other childhood
diseases.

"The vitamin A campaign had been planned for later in the year, but in
the light of the particularly harsh winter planners decided to bring
forward the exercise to afford increased protection to children now,"
Carwardine noted.

Carwardine said the cold weather conditions in recent weeks had led to a
delay in the NID coverage of 61 districts in 19 provinces where access
had become restricted by snowfalls. "These districts will be covered in
an extra round of immunisation scheduled for May," the UNICEF spokesman
said.

Child mortality is very high in the war-ravaged country. Afghanistan's
first national human development report, released last week, indicated
that 20 percent of children died before the age of five.

In the past several weeks, outbreaks of whooping cough, pneumonia and
measles have claimed over 200 victims, the majority of them children.
Carwardine said these diseases were easily preventable through routine
immunisations.

"While immunisation campaigns reach large numbers of children, routine
vaccination levels are under 50 percent in some parts of the country,"
he noted.


IRIN-Asia
Tel: +90 312 454 1177
Fax: +90 312 495 4166
Email: IrinAsia@IRINnews.org

[This Item is Delivered to the "Asia-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: IRIN@ocha.unon.org or Web:
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this
item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
sites requires written IRIN permission.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Appropriate Donations for International Disaster/Humanitarian Needs
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International                  web: www.cidi.org
     Disaster Information             listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
                                    guidelines: www.cidi.org/donate.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Central Asia                  www.cidi.org/humanitarian/hsr/centralasia