The first round of the Supplementary Polio Immunisation Activity concluded on Friday, August 3rd.
The completion of the first of 4 rounds posed great challenges and drawing lessons from these experiences.
The Health Department and its partners are now regrouping both human resource and medical supplies to meet the demand, which has been anticipated to double from the first round.
Department of Health and its implementing partners, World Health Organization and UNICEF, admit they were faced with many challenges in their quest to making PNG polio free again.
With complicated transportation arrangements, the teams faced difficulties going to hard-to-reach areas, especially in Madang Province.
Frequent movement of people between the high risk provinces of Madang, Eastern Highlands and Morobe required the usage of more vaccines than expected, therefore exceeding the supply.
In response, an additional 2 hundred thousand polio vaccines were bought to cover the immunisation needs of the travelling public.
Apart from the 3 high risk provinces, the Port Moresby and Gerehu General Hospitals received 500 polio vaccines each.
The government also released K2 million from the K7 million last week for the continuation of the special polio immunisation campaign for the next 3 months.
The special immunisation activity is currently in 2 weeks’ recess before round 2 commences on August 20th, 2018.