Round 1 Polio Vaccination exercise against the type 2 polio virus has officially begun, and at the beginning of the exercise, we visited the North Kaneshie vaccination team in the Okaikwei South Sub metro to observe how the exercise was progressing.
From the early hours of the morning until afternoon, the team has been on the move, striving to meet their ambitious target of reaching 600 children under 5 for the day. The lead for the vaccination team, Mary Appiagyei, shared insights into the day’s activities and their goals.
“We were given a target of 600 for today and as at now we’ve been able to vaccinate 512 children which means we are very close to achieving our target. We attended 3 schools today and from there we moved to those in the community to attend to those who aren’t in school that is 0-9 months. We are doing this in 2 rounds, we started the first round today and we will end on the 20. The second one is going to be on the 14th November and will end on the 17th,” she explained.
Throughout the day, the team encountered various misconceptions from guardians regarding the vaccinations. Mary Appiagyei emphasized the importance of addressing these concerns to ensure community trust and participation.
“Some people just say, we are using their children for trial like we are trying their children with the medicine and see whether it will work for other children, but we explain to them that those outside are even doing it, so it is not only Ghana. One woman was like, we’ve been doing it all the time and they aren’t seeing anything about it,” she explained.
For mothers who successfully vaccinated their children, the relieve was evident as they take major steps to safeguard their children’s health.
“I met the vaccination team at the shop, and they shared important information about the polio outbreak. I urge all mothers to let them protect our children.” A mother who got her son vaccinated noted.
“They are talking about polio, how to prevent polio and how to take care of the children so that they will not be contaminated.”
The team not only focused on vaccination efforts but also educated parents on how to protect their children from the type 2 polio virus by providing information on hygiene practices, recognizing symptoms and the importance of vaccination.
The vaccination team write P1 on the walls just to track their movement and the exercise.
For the Okaikwei South Sub metro, they have set a target of vaccinating 15,128 children out of the 1 million children in the country.
