Preparation under way for another polio immunisation campaign

AMMAN — Health authorities and UN agencies are preparing for another polio immunisation campaign following the recent discovery of a polio case in Iraq, officials said on Thursday.

Michelle Servadei, UNICEF Jordan Deputy Representative, said the agency is currently in discussions to organise another round of immunisation in cooperation with the Health Ministry and WHO.

However, the date is yet to be set for the launch of this campaign. 

The case, which was discovered in a six-month-old boy on March 30, prompted the UN to launch polio immunisation campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Egypt, targeting over 20 million children.

For Iraq, this will be the first nationwide immunisation campaign since the polio case was confirmed by the health ministry on March 30 in Rusafa, in northern Baghdad, a UNICEF statement said.

According to the statement, this is first case of polio to be seen in Iraq in 14 years.

Although Jordan is not part of the regional campaign announced this week, “local authorities are on alert,” Mohammad Abdullat, director of the Health Ministry’s communicable diseases directorate, told The Jordan Times over the phone on Thursday.

Abdullat added that authorities are continuing their immunisation campaigns at the points of entry into the Kingdom.

“We vaccinate refugees who are under the age of 15 once they cross borders,” Abdullat explained, noting that as a precautionary measure, there is also a need for another nationwide campaign.

Previous immunisation campaigns conducted in Jordan have covered 3.3 million people.

Funded by UNICEF, the three campaigns were based on WHO recommendations which stated that two to four doses of polio immunisation should be given to children in countries bordering any states where cases of the disease are discovered.

Eighteen cases of polio were discovered in neighbouring Syria in 2013, almost 15 years after the disease was eliminated there.

In Jordan, the last polio case was registered in 1992.