AP Features, March 2nd, 2007
Bangladesh plans polio vaccinations for about 24 million children age 5 and under on Saturday in a continuing effort to eliminate the disease, the health ministry said.
After a nearly six-year absence, poliomyelitis resurfaced in Bangladesh last year. The government, with U.N. help, launched a new series of campaigns against polio in April 2006.
About 700,000 volunteers and health workers were set to fan out across country Saturday to vaccinate children in about 140,000 vaccination camps, a health ministry statement said.
Polio vaccine is usually administered orally.
Temporary immunization centers were to be set up at bus and railway stations, and in parks, slums and schools, the ministry said.
The last round of vaccinations was conducted across the country on Dec. 23 last year, when officials inoculated 24 million children in a campaign they said was successful.
The government started its anti-polio drive in April 2006 with the help of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative _ a partnership comprising UNICEF, Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ministry said in its statement on Friday.
UNICEF and WHO helped conduct extensive polio vaccination programs in 1995-2004. In August 2000, the country thought it had seen its last case.
But Bangladesh's efforts to be declared polio-free were thwarted last year, when the virus left a 9-year-old girl paralyzed in the eastern district of Chandpur.
It was not clear how she became infected, but the same virus has also been found in parts of neighboring India. Since then, 16 other new cases have been found, the ministry said.
"Our country is not safe, as neighbors India and Pakistan are not polio free. Polio is endemic in India's Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, so it can easily enter into our country," health ministry adviser A.S.M. Matiur Rahman was quoted as saying Thursday by the United News of Bangladesh agency.
Another round of vaccinations will start on April 8, Rahman said.
The polio virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. It invades the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours. It can be fatal in some cases.
About 1,880 people were sickened by polio worldwide in 2005, down from more than 350,000 before 1988, when WHO launched a global anti-polio campaign, WHO said.
