Tanzania to vaccinate over 3 million children against polio

TANZANIA The Health Ministry is set to vaccinate over 3, 250,000 Tanzanian children under the age of eight against polio.

During a four-day campaign expected to start on September 21^st, this year, children born from 2016 will be immunized with nOPV2 vaccine.

The campaign’s objective is to protect children from six regions against the first and third types of polioviruses (bOPV), a ministry’s press statement issued on Friday stated.

In 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed the nOPV2 vaccine (Bio Farma, Indonesia) for emergency use to address the rising cases of a vaccine-derived polio strain in a number of African and East Mediterranean countries.

The Ministry added in the statement that the campaign will be conducted in Rukwa, Kagera, Kigoma, Katavi, Songwe and Mbeya regions, bordering with countries recently reported to have polio infections.

Such countries, according to the Ministry, are Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia.

 Throughout the exercise, the Ministry expects to immunize a total of 391,883 children in Rukwa region, Kagera 729,387, Kigoma 884,477, Mbeya 614,346, Katavi 227,862 and Songwe 402,643.

“During the campaign there will be a team with a total of 5,291 health service providers for all the six regions where each team will have three service providers and they will provide the services to the beneficiaries through health centers, door to door outreach, schools and other gathering places including house of worships,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, the minister for Health, Ummy Mwalimu ordered all Regional Commissioners and District Commissioners to closely oversee the implementation of the campaign.

Available data from the government indicates the last polio patient in Tanzania was diagnosed in 1996 and in November 2015, WHO declared Tanzania free from polio infection.

However, in May this year, it was reported that a child had been diagnosed and confirmed to have been infected with Polio virus.