More than 16 thousand children under the age of 5 have been vaccinated in Morobe, Eastern Highlands and Madang Provinces in the first 3 days after the launch of the special polio immunization campaign.
This is about 6% of the 3 hundred thousand target.
2900 vaccinators, volunteers, international polio experts, logisticians and communication officers have been deployed in health centres and mobile points to conduct vaccination.
Giving an update today, health department and its supporting and implementing partners said the general public in the 3 provinces have responded well to the call with all 3 provinces vaccinating well over 5000 children to date.
The first round of vaccination will continue until 29th July in the 3 provinces combined with house to house awareness.
“To better manage the day-to-day polio response operations, WHO established 3 Public Health Emergency Operations Centres at the provincial levels. These Centres have been furnished with equipment, supplies and systems and been turned over to the provincial health centres” reported Dr Luo Dapeng, WHO Representative to PNG.
611 thousand vaccines have been supplied by UNICEF and most of these have been shipped to districts for further distribution to the health facilities for the first 2 rounds of the campaign.
“We iterate our full commitment to continue to supporting all efforts to contain the spread of this disease” said Judith Bruno, Deputy Representative of UNICEF PNG Office
The PNG Council of Churches and Christian Health Services drive the message of the vaccination campaign and raise awareness through their different Church programs while PNG Red Cross Society have deployed 60 volunteers and will continue to help over the next 4 months under the Disaster Relief Fund.