Immunization of children under five years against Polio Type-2 has begun in Ghana’s capital, Accra.
The exercise follows the detection of a positive case of polio virus in environmental samples in Accra and Chereponi in the Northern Region where a two-year-old girl tested positive to the Type Two polio virus and the detection of the specific polio virus in environmental samples.
The Ghana Health Service has since issued an alert since it has been ten years since the last polio case was recorded.
At a ceremony to launch the exercise, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare asked parents to support the latest effort to eradicate polio in Ghana.
He said Ghana has “teams of health workers and volunteers who will move from house to house, school to school, market to market, lorry station to lorry station, churches and mosques to vaccinate all eligible children under the ages of five years”.
The exercise is Round Zero of Three Rounds of Polio Immunization.
Round One of the exercise in the northern part of the country would come off in October this year and would target children between the same age group.
Early next year, there are plans to immunize all children in the country between ages two and four who missed protection against the Type Two polio.
Source: Africafeeds.com