Africa-Press – Botswana. The national house-to-house oral polio vaccination campaign officially commenced wednesrday.
The campaign, which is targeted at children aged seven years and below, is a public health response to the detection of the circulating Vaccine Derived Poliovirus Type 2 (cVDPV2) in the country.
Officiating at the campaign launch in Gaborone, Minister of Health, Dr Edwin Dikoloti, said the campaign would help prevent the spread of the virus to vulnerable children, adding that unvaccinated children were at a high risk of polio infection.
“As the ministry charged with ensuring the health of our nation, including children, it is very important that we intervene as we are doing now, when we realise that the health of our children is in danger,” he said.
Dr Dikoloti said the country was fully committed to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and it was for this reason that for some years now, there had been no polio cases or traces of the polio virus in the country.
“The last indigenous wild-poliovirus (WPV) case in Botswana was reported in 1989 and in 2004 one imported case of WPV was reported in Ngami,” he explained.
He added that the polio surveillance was therefore critical for the eradication of the disease.
“In Botswana, this has mainly been achieved through Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance which was introduced in August last year to complement the AFP surveillance,” he stated.
Dr Dikoloti further stated that a circulating Vaccine Derived Poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) was detected in the country on October 27 last year from an environmental sample collected from a waste water treatment plant in Gaborone.
He said the virus was immediately linked to a strain currently circulating in Central Africa and another circulating Vaccine Derived Poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) was isolated in a waste water treatment plant in Francistown.
The minister said following the detection of the polio virus strains in the waste water plants, the ministry alongside its partners, responded by initiating a public health response system.
The recommendation coming from a joint formal risk assessment was that there was an urgent need to vaccinate all children below the age of seven years and below, with the oral novel polio type 2 vaccine (nOPV2).
“The urgency was borne from the fact that Botswana was found to be at high risk given the low polio immunization coverage especially for its children under the age of seven years,” he stated.
He said the first leg of the campaign would start today and end on February 26th, while the second leg will start on March 30th and end on April 2nd this year.
For her part, UNICEF Representative Dr Joan Matji said the world had made massive strides towards eradicating polio, but there was still considerable work to be done if the world was to cross the finish line.
“Allow me to take this opportunity to congratulate the Ministry of Health and its partners for taking swift action once the circulating vaccine derived polio was detected in routine environmental surveillance,” she said.
She said this was a true indication of a nation that was caring and was decisive when it came to positive child health outcomes.
Dr Matji also said COVID-19, may have contributed to a huge backslide in routine vaccination efforts globally and this probably gave the poliovirus an opportunity to spread, including to countries like Botswana which had not seen cases for decades.
“We also know that given the vastness of a country like Botswana there will be challenges in reaching children in difficult-to-access areas, but I would like to assure the Minister of Health that UNICEF, WHO and partner teams on the ground are doing a lot to address this, supporting the government on roll out, cold chain, logistics and social and behaviour change communication,” she concluded.
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