From Uche Uche, Damaturu.
The United Nations International Children Emergency Fund, UNICEF would carry out what it described as polio endgame campaign in the 17 local government areas of Yobe state, in the month of November, as the final chapter of the polio eradication effort.
Samuel Sesay, UNICEF consultant in the state, disclosed this yesterday while briefing journalists on the planned effort to keep the state completely polio free and protect the children from the adverse effect of the virus.
According to him, today most of the world is polio-free, but the disease continues to disable children in some countries such as Afghanistan, and Pakistan and, as long as polio exists anywhere, the disease remains a threat everywhere since, for now, there is no cure for polio, but there are two types of vaccines, the oral polio vaccine OPV, and an injectable, inactivated polio vaccine IPV that protects against the disease.
Thus, the polio endgame is a strategy that involves the use, or administering of these two vaccines for one polio in children between the ages of 0 to 59 months, which is aimed at a successful elimination and eventual eradication of the remaining wild polio viruses in some parts of the world.
The benefit of this campaign he said, is that it provides a strong and double protection against polio to the child, thus signaling the final chapter of the polio eradication effort.
He said children would be administered with the vaccines at fixed locations that would be designated and called on parents to take their children to those locations to access the vaccination that would give their children a life-saving protection against polio disease.
