Egypt vaccinates over 16M children against polio

CAIRO – 31 March 2022:  Up to 16,223,513 children were vaccinated against polio in Egypt since March 27 and until Wednesday March 20 according to Acting Health and Population Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Thursday.

He added in statements that 24,000 foreign children residing were among the vaccinated children in Egypt.

The annual vaccination program aimed to raise community immunity against the disease, and acted as a pre-emptive step in conjunction with polio outbreaks in a number of neighboring countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

starting Sunday, 27 March Egypt’s Health Ministry launched a nationwide vaccination campaign against polio for Egyptian and non-Egyptian children under five years of age.

The campaign, which targeted children from one day to five years old, extend until Wednesday, 30 March and aimed to vaccinate 100 percent of the target groups, the ministry said in a statement.

The campaign covered all governorates through 90,000 well-trained medical personnel, the statement said.

The campaign also included house-to-house visits in all governorates, villages and remote areas, Amr Kandil, the head of the ministry’s preventive medicine department said.

The medical teams stationed at markets, large squares, train stations, bus stops, metro stations, and malls, Kandil said. This is in addition to the teams that will be present in the health offices and centers in all governorates.

The ministry launched the campaign in February and December last year as part of the annual efforts to keep Egypt free of the disease. Through the campaigns, Egypt aims to vaccinate more than 16 million children aging between one day and 5 years old for free.

Many countries have succeeded in eradicating the disease by vaccinating children under five years old. Egypt joined the list in 2006 with the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF declaring that it was polio-free after the last case was discovered in 2004.