Zimbabwe says 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.
Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care Sleiman Timios Kwidini said the virus was detected in a 10-year-old child.
‘’Poliovirus variant has been detected in a 10-year-old child from Sanyati district of Mashonaland West province who presented to us with acute paralysis and had laboratory tests done for confirmation", Kwidini told a press conference on Friday.
The highly infectious viral disease usually invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis within hours, according to WHO.
Nationwide campaign
4.2 million vaccines have been distributed to health centres and workers across the country, with the first round of vaccination scheduled between February 20 and March 1, 2024, and the second round between March 19 and 29, 2024.
The authorities say teams of vaccinators will go house-to-house and will also be at designated vaccination centres.
Zimbabwe has not had a wild poliovirus case since 1989 and was declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation in 2005.
However, in June 2022, WHO recommended a comprehensive response to new cases of polio outbreaks spreading in the Southern African region.
Spreading cases
Mozambique 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.
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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