A massive vaccination campaign against polio is taking place in Somalia as part of continuous efforts to stop the spread of the paralysing illness.
The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in Somalia is supporting the initiative.
In a tweet over the weekend, UNICEF said it is on a five-day mass vaccination campaign ’’targeting over 2.7 million under-5 children in 80 districts.’’
In June 2022, WHO recommended a comprehensive response to new cases of polio outbreaks spreading in the Southern African region.
Somalia last reported live polio virus cases in 2022, when five children were infected.
Spreading cases
Mozambique also declared an outbreak on February 17, 2022, with neighbouring Malawi then reporting nine new cases of the wild poliovirus in August of the same year.
Since then, cases have spread to Botswana, Burundi, Rwanda, and Zambia.
In February, Zimbabwe said 4.2 million polio vaccinations will be administered to children under the age of 10 after a new polio case was detected in Sanyeti, north-central Zimbabwe.
The highly infectious viral disease usually invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis within hours, according to the WHO.
The virus is transmitted from person to person mainly through contact with contaminated faecal matter and can be prevented by immunisation.
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