Uganda is set to immunise about eight million children below the age of five during the polio vaccination campaign which kicked off today.
While speaking to journalists after flagging off the immunisation equipment at Kololo airstrip, the Minister for Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, said the exercise would be conducted door-to-door countrywide from today to 16th.
She said health workers will reach out to different families asking the parents and health workers to ensure that they finish this campaign which has been postponed for quite a while.
About Covid-19, Dr Aceng said earlier some health facilities had postponed the Covid-19 vaccination exercises but now health workers will not run outreach services for Covid-19 but Covid vaccination will continue to run at health facilities.
The UNICEF representative in Uganda, Dr Mohamed El Munir A. Safieldin, said one of Uganda’s greatest achievements over the past 20 years has been the ability to keep a huge number of children alive.
Last year in August 2021, Uganda announced that there was a polio outbreak in the country after samples on fecal matter collected from Lubingi tested positive.
The Ministry of Health warned that it was the rare wild poliovirus type 2, whose vaccine was withdrawn from the country’s routine immunization exercises in 2016
