The Upper East Region will this week have its turn in the polio vaccination exercise with a two-round event for children under five years.
The exercise, being undertaken by the Ghana Health Service (GHS), is in response to a confirmed case of vaccine-derived Polio Type Two Virus (cVDPV2) in a two-year-old child that developed an acute flaccid paralysis on July 23, 2019 at Andonyama, a sub-district of Chereponi in the Northern Region, on July 23, 2019.
About 1,400 community health volunteers will support health personnel in the region to visit houses, markets, schools and other important places for the beneficiaries to receive the vaccination.
The Regional Director of the GHS, Dr Winfred Ofosu, who made this known at a media briefing on the supplementary polio vaccination at Bolgatanga yesterday, stated that the first round would start from today, September 25, 2019 and end on Saturday, September 28, 2019 while the second round would begin on Wednesday, October 16, 2019 and end on Saturday, October 19, 2019.
Giving a background to the outbreak of the disease, the director observed that in early July 2019, the polio Type Two virus was confirmed in an environmental sample collected in June 2019 from the Tamale metropolis.
Dr Ofosu further explained that an additional cVDPV2 positive environmental sample was collected from the Accra district in the Greater Accra Region on August 13, 2019.
