In 2002, I witnessed a mass Polio vaccination campaign in Bulape, a village in Kasai Occidental. Workers will bull-horns carrying chilled vaccination went through the area. We had a big event in the village center. Mothers swarmed the workers with there babies and young ones.
In the current campaign, the provinces of Kasai Occidental and Kasai Oriental will be excluded. Interesting that all other provinces in Congo were included. The exclusion does not make sense.
KINSHASA, 20 June 2008 (IRIN) - Seven million children in nine of the 11 provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are being vaccinated against polio, a disease thought to have been eradicated in the vast country.
"Provinces the Congo river crosses are the most threatened and the river is the epicentre of the disease," said UN World Health Programme spokesman Eugene Kabambi.
DRC Health Minister Makwenge Kaput said the polio threat came from the neighbouring Central African Republic. "As the epidemiological situation evolves in the central African region with the reappearance of the wild polio virus, the virus has entered several health zones and propagated in Equateur and Orientale provinces," he said.
The only unaffected provinces in the country are Kasai Oriental and Kasai Occidental.
PRAYER:
Dear Heavenly Father, protect and sustain the thousands health workers as they work to vaccinate seven million children against the Polio virus. AMEN.
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