Govt, partners to continue fight against polio

THE fight to stop the transmission of the polio virus will continue this year with support from the Government and its partners, Health Secretary Pascoe Kase, pictured, says.
The campaign this year will be held in February, April and June, combining the measles and rubella vaccine.
Kase said as of last month, 26 polio cases had been reported, with the last one detected in Angoram, East Sepik.
More than 3.2 million children below 15 were vaccinated with last year’s campaign achieving a 97 per cent coverage rate.
“But not all provinces did well. This will be improved this year,” he said.
“Before the polio outbreak, the country’s immunisation rate was low – between 56 per cent and 69 per cent from 2012 to 2017.
“There were many reasons for the poor immunisation coverage rates.
“One of them is the poor management of resources at the provincial and district levels.
“Another is surveillance capability of the health system which has been improved as a result of the polio campaign and work on it will go on.
“Issues need to be sorted to improve and prevent the outbreak polio and other vaccine preventable diseases like measles, whooping cough and rubella.
“We are increasing our efforts to train health workers so they are better equipped to report cases of polio and send samples on time to get real time data and statistics.”