Mass Polio vaccination campaign extended to Wednesday 19th January 2022

The Health Ministry has extended the mass polio vaccination campaign for another three days due to the lack of vaccine carriers.

The ministry kicked off the exercise on Thursday, January 13th, 2022, and was expected to stop on Sunday, January 13th.     

However, the exercise will officially end tomorrow Wednesday, January 19th, 2022 following the three-day extension. It targets the Wild Polio 2 virus, samples of which were detected last year at two sewage treatment sites. This type of polio can lead to permanent paralysis or even death in some cases.

A Ministry of health survey carried out prior to the start of the campaign indicated that only 24,000 cold chain carriers were available in the country, meaning that about 56,000 out of the 80,000 teams deployed to conduct the polio vaccination exercise nationwide didn’t get the carriers, which are used to safely carry the vaccines. 

The ministry is using a staggered approach, where vaccination teams are sharing the carriers. According to Dr. Immaculate Ampaire the deputy program manager of the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI), the campaign exposed the need for investing in door-to-door cold storage equipment. 

“When it comes to other cold storage equipment we are okay but we do not have enough vaccine carriers. In this ongoing campaign, we had a shortfall of over 50,000 and that is why districts were asked to do a passed implementation,” said Ampaire.

The extension also comes after the ministry of health halted COVID-19 as a means of freeing up cold chain boxes that would otherwise have been used to store COVID-19 vaccines.

The Health Ministry Spokesperson, Emmanuel Ainebyoona, says that the ministry is working towards increasing the capacity of cold chain storage equipment in the country.

“We are working on increasing our capacity as a country. Recently the health ministry received equipment worth US$ 8.3million. We believe this will improve our vaccination services in the country,” he said. The mass polio vaccination campaign targets 8,791,710 million children aged 5 and below. However, as of Monday afternoon, only 7.2 million children had been vaccinated while another 1.5 million are yet to receive the vaccine.