Yemen announced on Tuesday that it launched a major polio vaccination campaign amid fears the disease could reappear in the war-ravaged nation.
Yemen was declared polio-free in 2009, but experts say conflict-affected countries are particularly at risk of outbreaks because of disruption to their health systems.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which is supporting the drive, said some 40,000 health workers aimed to immunize more than 5 million children under the age of five across the country.
“The threat of (polio) virus importation is serious and this campaign aims to curb any possible return of the virus to Yemen,” WHO’s representative in Yemen, Nevio Zagaria, said in a statement.
WHO’s spokesman on polio eradication, Sona Bari, said both Syria and Iraq saw polio outbreaks a few years ago.
“This is why the (Yemen) campaign at this time is extremely important,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Geneva.
“We have been very lucky that polio hasn’t shown up in Yemen, but it is a virus that travels very easily and is very good at finding unprotected children.”
The immunization drive, which began on Monday, had been scheduled for last September, but insecurity has hampered access.
The vaccination teams will also target high-risk groups including families uprooted from their homes by fighting and refugees who have fled to Yemen from conflicts in Africa.
Bari said there was a risk that polio vaccines would not be effective in malnourished children suffering from diarrhea because they would be flushed out.
Asharq Al-Awsat English
Asharq Al-Awsat is the world’s premier pan-Arab daily newspaper, printed simultaneously each day on four continents in 14 cities. Launched in London in 1978, Asharq Al-Awsat has established itself as the decisive publication on pan-Arab and international affairs, offering its readers in-depth analysis and exclusive editorials, as well as the most comprehensive coverage of the entire Arab world.
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