The polio vaccination exercise which started on the 1st September, 2022, was disrupted by rains in the Techiman Municipality. There is more in the following report.
Poliomyelitis is a contagious disease that affect children under five years of age. In 1988, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the worldwide eradication of polio, marking the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), spearheaded by national governments, WHO, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF, and later joined by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Since then, the incidence of polio worldwide has been reduced by 99%.
On the 1st September 2022, Ghana started the nationwide vaccination of the polio vaccine. In the Techiman Municipality, rains distributed the first day of the vaccination exercise. Health officers on the field had to stop the exercise because of the the rains.
On the second day of the exercise, officers were seen discharging their duty with ease. Whilst some children accepted the vaccine with ease, other had to be battled before the vaccine is administered.
The Municipal Health Director for the area is confident rains cannot be a challenge to the exercise. He however stated that their major challenge is logistics and road network.
Rotary Club one of the financiers of this program globally. As at the time Metro tv visited the Municipal Health directorate, the Techiman branch of the Rotary Club leadership were there to ascertain the progress of the exercise and spoke to Metro news.
The strategies for polio eradication work when they are fully implemented. This is clearly demonstrated by the successful eradication of the disease in most countries of the world.
The Polio Eradication Strategy 2022–2026 lays out the roadmap to securing a lasting and sustained world, free of all polioviruses, and transition and polio post-certification efforts are ongoing to assure that the infrastructure built up to eradicate polio will continue to benefit broader public health efforts, long after the disease is gone.
Key to success is ensuring the Strategy is fully implemented in all areas and is fully resourced. Failure to implement strategic approaches, however, leads to ongoing transmission of the virus. Endemic transmission of wild poliovirus is continuing in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Failure to stop polio in these last remaining areas could result in global resurgence of the disease. That is why it is critical to ensure polio is eradicated completely, once and for all.
Once polio is eradicated, the world can celebrate the delivery of a major global public good that will benefit all people equally, no matter where they live. Economic modelling has found that the eradication of polio would save at least US$ 40–50 billion, mostly in low-income countries. Most importantly, success will mean that no child will ever again suffer the terrible effects of lifelong polio-paralysis.
The global effort to eradicate polio has been declared a Public Health Initiative of International Concern, under the International Health Regulations, and temporary recommendations by an Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations have been issued to countries affect by poliovirus transmission or are at high risk of re-emergence of the disease.
The polio effort continues to support broader public health efforts, including helping respond to natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies, droughts, earthquakes, outbreaks of other infectious diseases and supporting disease surveillance for broader public health initiatives. The GPEI continues to support response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, including helping with disease surveillance, laboratory capacity and vaccine introduction and roll-out.
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