2nd Round Polio Vaccination Begins In The Ashanti Region.

The second round of the polio vaccination has begins today, October 6, and will ends Sunday, October 9, 2022, across the Region.

This round is targeted about 1,209,861 children under the age of five.

The Ashanti Regional Health Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang in an interview with the media said the aim of the campaign is to stop the local transmission of the polio virus Type Two, maintain high population immunity, strengthen surveillance on polio disease and prevent further polio outbreaks in the region.

The campaign is on the theme, “Kick Polio out of Ghana, vaccinate your child now”.

It is being done in collaboration with Global Polio Eradication Initiative, World Health Organisation, UNICEF and other development partners.

Dr. Tenkorang explained that the first vaccination, which took place last month was successful per what they targeted but expecting much increase in this second round exercise.

He noted that the national vaccination campaign against polio followed laboratory confirmation of polio events from some environmental surveillance sites as well as two polio cases in the country recorded by the Ghana Health Service.

He added that, the  polio outbreaks required vaccination response with an appropriate type-specific polio vaccine within a defined period after laboratory confirmation in order to break the transmission.

He said trained immunisation teams would go from house to house and other temporary health posts to immunise all children, including newborns.

“The teams have been trained to ensure optimal infection prevention, including COVID-19 prevention protocol,” he added.

Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang then advised parents to continually attend child welfare clinics to ensure that their children received all the necessary vaccines and other packages of intervention that promoted healthy childhood.