Northern Bahr el Ghazal State Ministry of Health with its partners began emergency vaccination against polio in Aweil South County last week.

Earlier this week, the national Minister of Health Dr. Riek Gai announced that there were several polio cases found in Eastern Equatoria and Northern Bahr el Ghazal after laboratory testing

A vaccination campaign has been planned for Sudan as well, in the border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

State Health Minister Hon. Tong Deng Anei told Radio Tamazuj on Wednesday that two cases were found in Aweil South County. The vaccination campaign will start there and will then be continued across all counties of the state.  

Tong stated that the effort will continue into November in neighboring counties of Warrap State owing to the constant movements of peoples between the two states.

“What happened was that, when we talk about outbreak, this is where we identified the case and we found that it was tested, and it was positive, but we have not seen any other cases of polio in other places so we cannot say there was another outbreak of polio in other places in which we are not sure of it.”

Drugs for the campaign are provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF but the vaccination and campaigning exercises are being carried out by the State Ministry of Health.

Tong further called upon the parents to let their children under age of five years be vaccinated. 

File photo: Health workers carry out polio vaccination in Yida, South Sudan, 9 December 2012 (Radio Tamazuj).