Daily Graphic (spread). Wed. March 03/10
Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
THE First Lady, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, has launched this year’s national polio immunisation days with a call on parents to patronise the routine immunisation to ensure that their children are protected against the disease.
“The end of polio is at sight so let us re-kindle our spirits and efforts to deal with the final blow to polio disease. Our children should not die; our children should not be crippled,” she said.
In all a total of 5.1 million children aged between zero and five years are expected to be vaccinated nationwide against the disease.
Polio is an acute viral disease that is easily spread from human to human contact through contaminated food or water and can kill or cripple children for life.
The First Lady launched the exercise in Accra of which the first round will begin from March 5 to March 7, 2010 with a second round from April 23 to 25, 2010 across the country.
Ghana, from September 2003 to August 2008, recorded no case of wild polio virus in the country until November 2008 when eight cases were reported in the Northern Region. However, till date no case has been recorded again.
According to the First Lady the eradication of polio from the country is a subject that ought to receive the utmost attention in preventive health care, adding that “as we all know, polio, one of the childhood killer diseases, has no cure but a vaccine, which has been in existence since 1963, can prevent a child from being affected“.
“It would therefore be very unacceptable to witness children in this modern era being killed or incapacitated by polio,” she noted.
Mrs Mills said Ghana had made considerable progress since the inception of the Polio Eradication Initiative in 1996, adding that the government remained committed to supporting the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in carrying out activities to achieve complete eradication both for campaigns and routine immunisation.
She expressed the government’s appreciation to donor partners including the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International, Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), who have all contributed immensely to the polio eradication efforts in the country.
Giving an overview of polio situation in the country, Dr K. O. Antwi-Agyei said the rationale for the 2010 National Immunisation Days (NIDs) was to synchronise the exercise in 14 West African countries to ensure that the entire sub-region was free from the disease.
He encouraged parents to ensure that their children were immunised, saying that repeated doses of the vaccine was beneficial as it protected the children who lived in poor environments where the polio virus thrived.
According to him, a Vitamin A supplement would be added to the second round of the exercise for children between the ages of six months and five years.
A WHO Representative, Dr Daniel Kertesz, who spoke on behalf of all donor partners, said the NID was a collective responsibility which must be undertaken by all to ensure that children received the vaccine for their well-being.
He said the fight against polio required that countries worked together for total eradication, saying that polio could not be eradicated unless every child was vaccinated.
The Chairman of the Ghana National Polio Plus of Rotary International (GNPPC), Mr Winfred A. Mensah, said Rotary had committed a total of $1,150,000 globally to help in the eradication of polio.
He said Rotary had supported the eradication of polio from 125 countries with only four countries, which he referred to as the “PAIN” countries, namely Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria, being the only countries yet to be free from the disease.
He said Rotary, as part of its effort, had also launched a polio free poster and a mobile phone test project where people could text “polio” to 1962 for a fee of GH¢1 in a bid to support the immunisation exercise.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Mr Robert Joseph Mettle-Nunoo, who chaired the launch, said the country could not afford to lose all the gains that it had made in the eradication processes.
He said the Ministry of Health adopted the mass campaign in addition to routine eradication to ensure that the country was free from the polio virus in the near future.
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