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The Ghana Health Service (GHS) aims to immunize about 4.5 million children under the age of five against the type 2 polio virus.
This will be under their massive monovalent oral polio vaccine campaign.
The immunization exercise will be carried out in two rounds in 179 districts in eight regions of the country.
The first round would take place between September 10 and 13 and the second phase between October 8 and 10.
The regions are Center, West, North West, Volta, Ashanti, East, High West and Greater Accra.
Dr Kwabena Sarpong, central deputy regional health director in charge of public health, revealed this at a Cape Coast news conference.
Explaining what the campaign has required, Dr Sarpong noted that two polio virus type 2 events were confirmed in Tamale and Agbogbloshie in the northern regions and Greater Accra, respectively, in July / August 2019 during the routine surveillance of poliomyelitis cases and events.
He later said that more surveillance events and cases were detected and confirmed in 11 regions with around 30 human cases and 115 routine surveillance events have been confirmed in the country so far.
The facts, he explained, were samples taken from sewage or feces, which tested positive for the polio virus.
“Only one confirmed case or event is alarming,” Dr. Sarpong warned.
This, he said, had triggered the public health responses of a mass vaccination campaign to break the transmission process and prevent further outbreaks to safeguard the health of children in the country.
“Ghana was certified polio-free in 2007 and immediately after that certification, it registered some imported cases in 2008. Then we worked very hard as a country, improved polio immunization for all our children, and again got polio-free certification. in 2015, “he said.
Dr. Sarpong said that children under the age of five must be vaccinated to break the growing immunity of the population against the virus.
He said there will be a massive house-to-house vaccination with strict adherence to Covid-19 health protocols.
In addition, immunization centers would be established in all health facilities and other areas to ensure that all children under the age of five were not excluded and they implored parents and guardians to open their homes for the immunization exercise.
Dr. Sarpong encouraged parents and caregivers to report to the nearest health center within 24 hours of any child under the age of 15 who develops sudden paralysis.
Giving an update on the Covid-19 situation in the region, Dr. Akosua Owusu Sarpong, Regional Director of Health Services, said that the region had so far registered 1,878 with only 39 active cases.
He said that 16 out of 22 districts in the region did not have an active case of Covid-19 and encouraged people to continue to adhere to preventive health protocols to protect themselves and avoid contracting the disease.
He said that an observational study on the use of face masks revealed that 44.8 percent of the public wore the masks in the region, while social distancing was also ignored.
“They are practices that promote the spread of Covid-19 and therefore we must do more to ensure that we do not have a spike,” he advised.
