Jozenet Muhindo
KABAROLE: The Kabarole Resident District Commissioner, Sarah Julian Ayesige has ordered the District Health Office to scrap off unvaccinated VHTs from the list of those to participate in the mass polio vaccination exercise.
The campaign that will take three days is set to kick off on 14th to 16th of January 2022 where all children under the ages of five are highly encouraged to be vaccinated.
Addressing the members of the District task force on Tuesday evening, the RDC noted that deploying unvaccinated VHTs in the field to interact with the community members was very risky.
During this national wide exercise health workers with the help of LC1 chairpersons and a HVT in their respective villages will be moving house to house giving oral polio vaccine to all children below the age of 5.
The district has organized a training of health workers including district Supervisors and Village Health Teams (VHTs) that will participate in a three day house to house vaccination campaign against Polio. With this, the RDC tipped the DHO to use the training as a deception to have all unvaccinated VHTs receive the jab.
Dr. Denis Rubahika Kinungu, a senior medical officer in the monitoring, evaluation and research department under the Ministry of Health said the Polio virus type 2 is the more virulent of the three types, 1, 2, and 3.
Dr. Rubahika said the resurgence can be attributed to the reduced routine immunization in the country due to COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
He says the model of delivery is similar to the routine Polio vaccine and urged the public to embrace the campaign regardless of whether a child has already been vaccinated.
