The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has urged residents of gated communities to permit healthcare workers to access their homes and vaccinate children under five, to boost polio vaccination coverage.
The Service said that it was crucial for healthcare workers to access gated communities, as over 1,000 children missed the first round of the national polio vaccination campaign due to restricted access.
Dr. Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Programme Manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), made this call during the launch of the second round of the National Oral Polio Vaccine Type 2 (NOPV2) vaccination campaign in Accra.
The campaign, on the theme, “Help Kick Polio Out of Ghana,” aims to protect children under five years old from polio by ensuring they receive the vaccine.
Dr. Achiano, also the Deputy Director and Head of the Disease Control & Prevention Department at the GHS, explained that gated communities, commonly found in urban areas, often posed challenges for healthcare workers in reaching children for vaccination.
“And so, we are requesting that they make the children available. Even if they will not allow us to enter, we do not have a problem, but they should allow us to vaccinate the children,” he said.
The second round of the National Polio Vaccination Campaign, scheduled for November 21-24, 2024, aims to vaccinate approximately 7.2 million children under five nationwide.
The initiative seeks to prevent the transmission of the Type 2 Poliovirus variant, enhance disease surveillance, and avert a polio outbreak.
This campaign follows the detection of a polio variant in September at the Koforidua Environmental Surveillance site.
Dr. Achiano said that children who received the first dose of the polio vaccine would also receive the second dose, and those who missed the first round still had the opportunity to get at least one dose.
He urged private schools to cooperate by making children under five years old available to healthcare workers during vaccination visits to ensure the campaign’s success.
Dr. Frankline Asiedu-Bekoe, Director of Public Health, representing the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), stressed the significance of the second round of the campaign.
He said it would ensure every child under five receives two oral doses of the vaccine, contributing to both individual protection and the nation’s overall health.
Dr. Raymond Dankoli, Coordinator of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) and Officer-in-Charge at the World Health Organization (WHO) Ghana, said polio remained a threat in several countries.
He noted that achieving a vaccination coverage of at least 95 per cent in Ghana would not only protect individual children but also strengthen community immunity, contributing to the global effort to eradicate polio.
Dr. Dankoli encouraged parents and caregivers to take advantage of the campaign and ensure their children are vaccinated.
Poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio, is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis within hours.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the virus is transmitted from person to person, primarily through the faecal-oral route, though it can also spread through contaminated water or food.
Once in the body, the virus multiplies in the intestines and can invade the nervous system, potentially causing paralysis.
In 1988, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution to eradicate polio globally, marking the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
Since then, wild poliovirus cases have dropped by more than 99 per cent, from 350,000 cases in over 125 endemic countries to just six reported cases in 2021.
