Uganda on Tuesday received 12.9 million doses of polio vaccine from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for use in the second cycle of the national immunization campaign at home scheduled for next month, Uganda’s Ministry of Health has announced.
“Vaccines for children are the most effective strategy to reduce child mortality. The second cycle of the immunization campaign (…) will fully protect children against poliomyelitis,” said UNICEF Representative Munir Safieldin in Uganda.
The first round of vaccination administered in January targeted more than eight million children under the age of five.
Last August, Uganda announced the outbreak of polio in the country after faecal samples taken from the capital Kampala tested positive. The Ministry of Health then warned that it was the rare wild type 2 polio virus, the vaccine for which was excluded from the country’s routine immunization programs in 2016.
The resurgence has been attributed to the reduction in routine immunization in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Uganda had been certified polio-free in October 2006 by the World Health Organization after not reporting any indigenous polio cases for ten years.
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that mainly affects children under the age of five and is transmitted by the faecal-oral route and by aerosol droplets.