Ghana: National polio vaccination campaign to commence in early 2020

The Ghana Health Service has declared that it would embark on polio vaccination of all children under 5 years across the nation in early 2020.

According to APA News, the exercise was part of a strategy mapped out to combat the epidemic, which hit the country this year, after recording no case of polio in over 10 years.

Ghana, one of the many African countries to have totally eradicated polio, recorded one case in the northern region in June this year.

The Daily Graphic reports on Tuesday that the Head of the Disease Surveillance Unit of the GHS, Dr. Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, disclosed in Accra that the exercise will begin in the district that have recorded cases of polio.

Asiedu-Bekoe was speaking on the occasion of the second Scientific Conference and Competency Graduation Ceremony of the Ghana Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (GFELTP) in Accra. The conference was themed: "Building and Sustaining Field Epidemiology Workforce through GFELTP: The Role of Government, Private Sector and Institutional partners".

He noted that the resurfacing of the disease could be attributed to poor environmental sanitation practices. According to him, most countries in the world were polio-free, except Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There should be a strong surveillance system put in place so that the situation did not get out of hand.