Sekondi, Feb. 19,- GNA-The Western Regional Public Health Unit of

the Ghana Health Service (GHS) would use a total of about 1.5 million dozes of Oral Polio Vaccines (OPV) for the first round of the 2004 Immunization against Polio that would take place in the region between February 27 and 29.

The exercise, which forms part of the National Immunization Day (NID) and Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI), would target children aged between zero and five years, whose population is estimated at about 619,795.

Mr. Peter Ofori-Tweneboah, the Regional EPI Coordinator disclosed this at a day's training programme for district directors of health services on Thursday on the 2004 NID/EPI Coverage and Survey Training. He said though the region achieved 100 per cent coverage during the 2003 exercise, one case of Polio was recorded in the Jomoro district of the region later in that year.

Mr. Ofori-Tweneboah said the NID/EPI, which began in 1996 and aimed at eliminating Polio from the country by 2000, had to be extended following the discovery of eight new cases, after the exercise last year.

Mr. Ofori-Tweneboah appealed to parents, volunteers, drivers and the general public to support the NID and the GHS to eradicate the disease from the country.

He assured parents that Polio vaccines are not poisonous and would not in anyway harm children.

He said a team of volunteers recruited by the GHS, would be dispatched to lorry parks, train stations and other transit points in the region, to ensure that all children were covered by the exercise. Dr. Godwin Affenyedu, Senior Medical Officer in-charge of the Public Health advised the district directors to devise convenient means of reaching inaccessible areas within their districts.

He said the Polio exercise was now an international issue and needed the attention of all health professionals.