Nine million children set to be vaccinated against polio after Malawi outbreak

A campaign to vaccinate more than nine million children against polio is being launched in four countries in southern and eastern Africa after an outbreak in Malawi.

Inoculation drops are being placed in the mouths of children across Malawi, including in the capital, Lilongwe, and the country’s biggest city, Blantyre.

The vaccination drive will branch out to the neighbouring countries of Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia later this week.

In February, a three-year-old girl was paralysed by wild poliovirus in Lilongwe – the first case detected in Africa for more than five years.

Polio mainly affects children under five, and one in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles are immobilised.

There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. But the vaccine, given multiple times, can protect a child for life, says the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, but experts say a failure to eradicate it could result in up to 200,000 new cases globally every year, within a decade.

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UNICEF, the WHO, and other partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, are supporting governments with the urgent vaccination drive.

‘Polio spreads fast and can kill’

Mohamed M Fall, UNICEF regional director for eastern and southern Africa, said the organisation is doing “everything possible to stop the virus in its tracks”.

He added: “Polio spreads fast and can kill or cause permanent paralysis.”

UNICEF UK told Sky News: “The pandemic has put a huge strain on health systems globally, and even more so in low-income countries where essential health services have been stretched to capacity.

“There is an urgent need to restore, increase and maintain uptake of routine immunisation services that protect children from debilitating and preventable diseases such as polio.”

People most commonly contract polio when they drink water contaminated by the faeces of someone who carries the virus.

Those living in areas with poor sanitation are most at risk.

36 million vaccine doses secured

UNICEF has:

• Secured more than 36 million doses of the polio vaccine for the first two rounds of the immunisations

• In Malawi, it is installing 270 new vaccine refrigerators, repairing other refrigerators, and distributing 800 remote temperature monitoring devices, vaccine carriers and cold boxes

• In partnership with the WHO, it has trained 13,500 health workers and volunteers, 34 district health promotion officers and 50 faith leaders

• It plans to follow up with three more rounds of vaccinations in the coming months with a goal of reaching more than 20 million children in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

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