Maputo, 14 Sep (AIM) – The Mozambican Ministry of Health on Wednesday launched the ninth campaign of vaccination against polio, which is intended to vaccinate all children under the age of 15.
Mozambique was once considered free of polio, but in 2022 33 suspected cases of the disease were recorded.
In June this year, 19,978,803 children and adolescents were vaccinated against polio. Between Wednesday and Saturday, the same people will be vaccinated again, plus any who were missed in June. The campaign will cost about 11 million US dollars.
Interviewed by the independent television station STV, Deputy Health Minister Ilesh Jani argued that repeated vaccination campaigns are the only way to eradicate the disease from the country.
“We need to guarantee the level of immunity of our children, so as not to allow the circulation of the virus, and the only way of doing this is through repeated vaccination campaigns”, Jani said. “Just one dose of the vaccine is not enough to reach the levels of immunity that we want”.
“We have to carry out several rounds of vaccination”, he added, “and so the same people have to be vaccinated several times, to reach a level of anti-bodies that protects them against the virus. The polio virus causes paralysis, it can lead to death, and it is extremely transmissible. So we have the duty to protect our population against this extremely dangerous virus”.
The vaccination campaign will take place in schools, creches, churches, centres for displaced people, and anywhere else where large groups of people gather. The vaccination brigades will also go from door to door in residential areas.
(AIM)
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