The Blantyre District Health Office will be administer polio vaccine to children under the age of 15 years from 12 July to 15 July this year.
This was disclosed at the conference on the 11th July 2023 by Dr. Gift Kawalazira, Director of Health and Social Services. He said the first round of 2023 polio campaign will be launched tomorrow as they will be getting ready to start distributing the polio booster vaccine to all children under the age of 15 years in Blantyre.
The director pointed out that Malawi is at a high risk of acquiring Polio as we are neighbouring with other countries which have detected this virus. Therefore it is important as a country that parents take their children for vaccination as it will help to stop transmission of the virus but also increase immunity of children.
“Health facilities, like government hospitals and private hospitals like mwaiwathu and Adventist hospital will be administering the vaccine as well as schools and mobile places like markets, churches and mosques, said Kawalazira”.
He further said that the vaccine will be administered through door to door and will be given in oral form with 2 drops through the mouth and the children’s fingers will be marked for statistics purposes.
Meanwhile the target of the vaccine is to reach out to at least 95% which is the overall population of 667,375 children and 8,856,591 nationwide. The purpose of this exercise is to ensure the safety of the country against the disease.
Reported by Alex Splendor Ngulube