Polio vaccination campaign launched to cover hard-to-access areas

Provinces, SANA – A polio vaccination campaign was launched on Sunday targeting children in hard-to-access areas and areas where vaccination coverage was less than 80% during previous campaigns.

The five-day campaign is launched by the health directorates in a number of provinces through mobile teams.

Ramez Orfaly, Head of the Health Directorate in Damascus, said that the campaign targeted about 60,000 children under five-year-old in places where new arrivals from the eastern region are residing and in hard-to-reach areas that were not covered in last October’s campaign and neighborhoods that did not reach 80 percent coverage according to the neutral assessment of last month’s campaign.

According to Orfaly, the vaccines used in the campaign are bivalent oral polio vaccine for all children under five years and the poliovirus vaccine for children between the age of 3 months and 2 years.

He added that the campaign will be carried out via mobile teams only, adding that 50 teams of 164 health workers will participate in the vaccination process.

In Damascus Countryside, the campaign targets about 90,000 children and will cover Eastern Ghouta, Jaramana, some neighborhoods of Qtaifa and al-Nabek, Qatana, al-Drosha, Erbin, Jdaidet Artouz and some of the villages of Barada Valley.

More than 31,000 children will be vaccinated within this campaign in the central Homs province.

In the northern Hasaka province, the campaign is targeting 38,000 children through mobile teams in the hard-to-reach areas in al-Shadadi and its countryside.

M.al-Frieh/H. Said

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