Vaccination Campaign Against Polio Underway in Middle East

Health officials announced Friday a campaign to vaccinate more than 20 million children against polio to stop an outbreak of polio in Syria from spreading throughout the region.

The mass vaccination against polio, which can spread rapidly among children, is already under way in the Middle East a week after the region declared a polio emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN children fund UNICEF said.

Now, The World Health Organization (WHO) and U.N. children's agency are joining forces to immunize more than 20 million children in seven countries and territories during the coming six months.

The WHO Polio Eradication Program Spokeswoman Sona Bari said the virus has been traveling in the region for some time, notably in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.  

"This is a sustained six-month effort.  There will be repeated campaigns over this period of time.  It is going to need quite an intense period of activity to raise the immunity in a region that has been ravaged both by conflict in some parts, but also by large population movements.  So, the virus is moving throughout the region," she said.

Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are the last three endemic countries in the world, so it is from there that polio will continue to spread.  Since WHO began its polio eradication campaign in 1988, vaccination has reduced this crippling disease by more than 99 percent globally.

"Preliminary evidence indicates that the poliovirus is of Pakistani origin and is similar to the strain detected in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip," the OCHA statement said.