• Polio is a serious infectious illness caused by poliovirus.
• Counties are Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, Turkana, Tana River, Marsabit, Lamu, Mombasa, Kilifi, Isiolo and Nairobi.
The Health Ministry will roll out the second round of polio vaccination campaign on Saturday.
Some 2,635,714 under-fives are targeted in a drive that will end on Wednesday next week. It will be undertaken in 11 high-risk counties of Garissa, Mandera, Wajir, Turkana, Tana River, Marsabit, Lamu, Mombasa, Kilifi, Isiolo and Nairobi.
The vaccines were procured through Unicef and arrived in the country late September. They have been distributed to regional depots in the counties and will be taken to subcounty health facilities.
Some 217,176 children are targeted in Garissa, 30,217 in Isiolo, 331,445 in Kilifi, 262,510 in Turkana, 21,217 in Lamu, 308,923 in Mombasa, 205,468 in Mandera, 73,564 in Marsabit, 883,793 in Nairobi, 65,008 in Tana River and 113,780 in Wajir.
Health ministry's head of Disease Surveillance and Epidemic Response Daniel Langat yesterday said the national launch of the campaign will be done on Friday.
“The strategy will include having special teams to access highrise buildings and hard-to-reach areas,” Dr Langat said.
Polio is a serious infectious illness caused by the poliovirus. It is spread through contact with the stool of an infected person. Symptoms include fever, tiredness, headache, vomiting, stiff neck, and pain in the arms and legs. For one in 200 people with polio infection, the virus travels to the nervous system, hence causing a permanent paralysis, usually in the legs. This is called paralytic polio.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
“We are carrying out the numerous vaccination campaigns because routine immunisation coverage in the country does not reach all the children, leading to an accumulation of susceptible children,” Langat said.
“In addition, populations with limited access to health services have lower coverages increasing the risk of poliovirus. These populations include hard-to-reach areas due to distances or terrain, security-compromised areas, nomadic populations, urban slums, and vaccine-hesitant groups.”
If children are not adequately immunised, the weakened vaccine virus mutates in their intestines and is excreted as a wild or naturally occurring virus. In the past year, no African country has reported a single case of polio since the outbreak in Nigeria in 2016.
However, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean region, which includes countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait, remain the only regions not certified as polio-free.
Certification of polio eradication is conducted on a regional basis. Each region can consider certification only when all countries in the area demonstrate the absence of wild poliovirus transmission for at least three consecutive years in the presence of certification standard surveillance.
(Edited by F'Orieny)