Herat rolls out Polio vaccine campaign

HERAT (TOLOnews): Public Health officials in Herat confirmed a polio vaccination campaign was launched in some districts on Sunday as concerns mount over the possibility of new cases due to the high number of internally displaced persons in the province.

Health officials said in order to prevent an outbreak of the disease, the campaign was launched on Sunday morning in districts health workers are able to access.

However, floods and heavy snowstorms have cut off some areas. Officials said once the weather improves, health workers should be able to access these areas from next week.

Abdul Hakim Tamana, head of Herat public health department, said over 280,000 children under the age of five will receive the polio vaccine in Herat during this campaign.

“We have discovered the wild polio virus in the waste water that we test every month; in fact this was when internally displaced people (IDP) came to Herat,” said Tamana.

Local officials said the anti-polio virus drops will also be given to children in areas under Taliban control.

“Because the polio campaign is a national program and the children of the opposition (Taliban) also live here and they are also Afghan and living in Afghanistan; therefore mobile vaccination teams will vaccinate children wherever they are,” said Ghulam Daoud Hahsimi, Herat’s deputy governor.

Officials said they are particularly concerned about the spread of the disease in Shindand, Zawol, Zerkoh, Poshteh-Koh, Kooh-Zoor and Qasaba districts. But local officials in Shindand say that, despite the presence of the Taliban, no children in these districts will be left out.

“Insecurity does not impact the vaccination campaign. Since 2015 we did not have a single case of polio in Shindand and there were no obstacles in the way of health workers reaching the children,” said Hikmatullah Hikmat, the district governor for Shindand district.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) meanwhile said they are working closely with government in order to eliminate the disease.

“More than 800 of our employees are busy providing public awareness campaigns in Shindand district and also we have specified our teams to go door to door for displaced people and provide them with awareness,” said Qudratullah Shinwari, an adviser for UNICEF in Herat province.

Afghanistan and Pakistan were the only two countries in the world to record cases of polio last year. Afghanistan recorded 21 cases in total in 2018 and four cases have already been detected this year.