Top Killer Disease in Uganda Records Success in Mitigation

When?COVID-19?hit Uganda in early March 2020, the country got shocked at the same time when Uganda’s Top killer disease, Polio resurfaced amidst the pandemic. In a dual battle, the ministry of health (MOH) pledged to carry out a mass polio vaccination campaign across the country targeting to vaccinate a total of 8 million children below five years of age.

The door-to-door vaccination strategy aimed at kicking polio out of Uganda started in January 2022, and in the end, it has recorded a huge success yet again, in the history of vaccination for the 8 killer diseases in Uganda. 95% of the total target number of children to get vaccinated against polio were vaccinated in the mass campaign.

“Ninety-five percent (95%) of the 8.7 million children under five years have been immunized against type 2 polio during the three days mass vaccination campaign,” noted MOH Uganda.

Polio is a viral disease that is transmitted from person to person, mainly through a fecal-oral route or less frequently, through contaminated water or food and multiples inside the intestines.

Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the Director-General of Health Services in a statement delivered at the Media council said that the virus sequencing test done in South Africa on the two samples showed that, the confirmed circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Virus is linked to a circulating cVDPV2 lineage in Sudan. He also added that the results confirmed a circulating Vaccine Derived Polio Virus Type 2 in Uganda.

The campaign to eradicate polio internationally is being championed by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative which is a public-private partnership led by nation-states with partners; WHO, CDC, Rotary International, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.