By Godfred A. Polkuu, GNA
Bolgatanga, Sept. 24, GNA – The Ghana Health Service (GHS) in collaboration with international and local partners will conduct the first phase of Polio vaccination exercise on Wednesday, September 28, across the Upper East Region.
The second phase will commerce from October 16, to October 19 this year, and is targeted to vaccinate children under five years of age.
Dr Winfred Ofosu, the Upper East Regional Director of the GHS, who disclosed this at a press briefing in Bolgatanga, said “Every child within this age range will be provided with the vaccination to ensure full protection from this debilitating disease.”
He said Community Health Volunteers and health personnel would move from house to house, schools, and market centers among other places to provide the polio vaccination so that no child within the age range would be left out.
“Every child will be given two drops of the polio vaccine and I entreat all caregivers who are not visited at home, to go to the nearest health facility to receive the vaccination,” he said.
He recalled that on August 23, 2019, the Ministry of Health, Ghana, reported a confirmed case of the vaccine derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2) in a two-year-old child from Andonyama, a Sub-district in Chereponi in the Northern Region who developed acute flaccid paralysis on July 23, 2019.
“This is the first case of the cVDPV reported in Ghana; in early July 2019, a cVDPV2 was confirmed in an environmental sample collected in June, 2019 from the Tamale Metropolis, Northern Ghana. An additional cVDPV2 positive environmental sample was collected from Accra District, Greater Accra Region on August 13, 2019.”
According to the Director, those positive environmental samples and the case of cVDPV2 appeared to be linked to the strain of vaccine, derived from poliovirus that emerged in Jigwa State in Nigeria, which subsequently spread to other parts of Nigeria.
He reminded members of the public that poliomyelitis or polio was a highly infectious viral disease which affected mainly young children and urged mothers and caregivers to take good care of children and ensure that they did not eat sand or food that got contaminated with dirt.
“The virus is transmitted from person-to-person through the faecal-oral route from contaminated water or food and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. The weakness most often involves the limbs but may less commonly involve the muscles of the head, neck and diaphragm,” he said.
Dr Ofosu noted that the exercise was not different from previous mass vaccination exercises conducted in the country over the years, and assured members of the public that all their vaccines were safe, and had over the years reduced the number of diseases and deaths in the Region.
He encouraged caregivers with children within the age range to make them available for the exercise to ensure full protection against poliomyelitis, and urged members of the public to practice regular hand washing with soap under running water, avoid open defecation, keep their environments clean and maintain good personal hygiene.
GNA
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