Accra (Greater Accra) - The Ministry of Health will send 44,000 volunteers and supervisors on a house- to- house polio eradication programme for six days in October and November.
This will be the first time that Ghana will be carrying out a massive polio immunisation programme on the house to house bases.
"The ministry realised the effectiveness of this new strategy after the pilot project it undertook between the period of May and June, this year in 42 districts and sub-districts in hard-to- reach areas, where the wild polio virus had earlier been isolated,'' said Dr Emmanuel Mensah, Director General of Health Services.
The programme will be conducted by 40,000 volunteers and 4,000 supervisors. The first round of the exercise will take place between October 20 to 22 and the second round will be November 24 to 26.
At a press briefing on Thursday, Dr Mensah said the pilot project carried out earlier this year in the districts and sub- districts enabled health officials to reach a large number of children under the ages of five and "the results were encouraging.''
Dr Mensah said: "Over 18,000 children under the ages of five who had never received polio vaccine either through the routine or National Immunisation Days (NIDs) were for the first time immunised with polio vaccine.''
This year's house-to-house immunisation is sponsored by WHO, UNICEF, USAID, Rotary International CIDA, Japanese government and the Ministry of Health.Dr Mensah noted that this year 17 West and Central African countries will be using the house- to-house strategy carried out on the same days, and a special team has been assigned to undertake immunisation at their international borders.
Dr Sam Bugri, Director of Public health Services, said NID activities will end only if for three continuous years no polio cases are detected in Ghana and neighbouring countries record no polio virus cases.
"But if they continue to record polio cases then Ghana will be forced to continue with the NIDs,'' Dr Bugri said.
Dr Bugri called on communities and individuals to co-operate in this national exercise to ensure that each child is immunised and polio is kicked out of Ghana.
