By Glory Msowoya
One of the country’s health rights activists Maziko Matemba has urged parents and guardians to jealously look after and encourage their children to receive polio vaccine.
In an interview with Malawi News Agency on Wednesday, Matemba said parents should complement the effort made by government by ensuring that children are well protected from polio.
“Polio has been a success in Malawi and we don’t think it will be a major challenge but parents need to be reminded of this polio campaign as the time for the vaccination period is small due to logistical planning of the exercise,” he said.
In February this year, the country reported a confirmed an imported case of Type 1 wild poliovirus (WPV1) in Lilongwe, the first case in 30 years as the country last reported a polio case in 1992.
However in order to reduce further spread of polio, Government through the Ministry of Health announced that it will commence administering a four-consecutive day polio vaccine from March 21 to 24.
The country’s community health ambassador expressed hope that Malawi will contain polio basing on past experiences and skills in dealing with the disease adding that it is important for children to get vaccinated as the disease has no cure.
He further appealed to the general public to refrain from sharing messages that would scare parents from getting their children vaccinated referring to what has been happening with the covid-19 vaccine.
“We are aware that Malawi has an experience and skill in polio vaccination through the community health workers whose capacity was built over time by government and partners.
“These community health workers are station in all areas including the hard to reach but they will require adequate support system on this campaign which we believe Ministry of health has planned very well with partners for the polio campaign,” said Matemba.
A total of 6.8 million doses of bivalent oral poliovirus vaccine are expected to be administered during the campaign targeting over 2.9 million children below the age of five countrywide.
