Aid workers Friday launched a mass vaccination campaign against polio in the Republic of Congo, where more than 100 people have died since October a Red Cross official said.
“The vaccination campaign indeed began today at Pointe-Noire and in the (neighbouring) Kouilou” region, said the official, who asked not to be named but is a member of the crisis committee based in Pointe-Noire, the economic capital and an Atlantic port.
“The figures are alarming. There are 105 dead for 240 cases registered across the country. Most cases we have registered are in hospitals,” the Red Cross official added.
On Thursday, the health ministry, the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Rotary Club jointly announced the campaign “targeting three million people (…) in response to a polio epidemic which has unusually claimed a majority of adult victims.”
“You mustn’t think this campaign will only cover Pointe-Noire,” Health Minister Georges Moyen told journalists Thursday. “On November 18, it will be the turn of Brazzaville, which like Dolisie and Nkayi (in the southwest), is also affected by the epidemic.”
These four principal towns in the central African country account for more than three quarters of the Congolese population of 3.6 million inhabitants, according to official figures.
Moyen said that “the vaccination will be carried out door-to-door, even in administrative offices,” and added that 12 million doses of the vaccine would be needed to complete the operation, including booster shots.
In a statement, the WHO said that neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola would also be the object of vaccination campaigns.
Polio was thought to have been eradicated in Congo, where no cases had been registered since 2000, according to the WHO.
“According to our preliminary epidemiological inquiries, this is an imported polio virus,” Congolese health director Alexis Elira Dokekias recently told AFP, adding that “the greatest number of cases are (…) between 15 and 40 years old,” which is unusual. Polio generally affects children.
Dokekias said that the victims are “certainly people who have either been vaccinated before by vaccines no longer effective or not vaccinated.”
In 2000 and 2001, the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Gabon carried out synchronised campaigns against the polio virus.
Brazzaville, Nov 12, 2010 (AFP)
