AMMAN — The Ministry of Health on Sunday concluded its second nationwide immunisation campaign against polio, and is planning to launch a third one soon.
Mohammad Abdullat, director of the Health Ministry’s communicable diseases directorate, said the campaign covered 97 per cent of the targeted group — children under the age of five.
Figures he cited showed that 790,000 children were immunised against polio over the past week.
Of the total, 82,741 children are Syrians living among host communities, and some 16,000 are Syrian children living in the camps.
Abdullat said a meeting will be held soon to decide when to launch the third campaign.
The first nationwide vaccination campaign was carried out in November last year, covering polio, measles and rubella.
During the three-week campaign, 1,093,532 children were immunised against polio, 115,150 of them Syrian.
Funded by UNICEF, the immunisation campaigns are based on WHO recommendations to give two to four doses of polio vaccine to children in countries bordering any states where cases of the disease were discovered.
In previous remarks, Abdullat said 17 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 discovered in 1992.
Before the launch of the campaign, health officials and experts said the vaccines the Health Ministry gives to children in Jordan are “safe” and parents need not worry.
Representatives of the ministry, UNICEF, WHO and other partners have said that the vaccinations given in Jordan are also administered in the countries that produce them, and all the required tests have been conducted to ensure their safety.
