First round of the National Immunisation Days begins

Accra, Oct. 23, GNA- An estimated target population of about 4.7 million children under five years are expected to be immunized against polio beginning from Friday, October 24 to Sunday, October 26 as part of the National Immunisation Days' campaigns throughout the country. The exercise would be repeated for the second round from December 5-7 to ensure that every child under five is vaccinated.

In all, 42,000 volunteers and 3,000 supervisors would provide the vaccines for the eligible children at an estimated cost of 2.67 million dollars.

The exercise is sphere-headed by the World Health Organisation, Rotary International, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.

Ghana, which was almost at the end of the global certification of eradicating polio by 2005, after recording zero cases in 2001 and 2002 has had a setback after detecting six imported new cases traced from Niger from February to September this year. Three of the cases were identified in the Northern Region, one each in Eastern, Brong Ahafo and Western regions. Ghana ranks second in Africa in terms of number of isolated cases next to Nigeria and fourth in the world.