Second Round of Sixth Campaign for Polio Eradication in Yemen Successfully Completed [Archives:2001/47/Health]

archive
November 19 2001

Since 1996, the Republic of Yemen has been achieving gradual success in implementing its health strategy centered on eradication of child polio through six national campaigns. This will allow Yemen to qualify for a distinctive position among the East-Mediterranean region. Such achievement is also of great value for the children of Yemen, the country’s next generation.
The current sixth national campaign is of great significance as it is the last and final national campaign to eradicate child polio in Yemen. By the end of this campaign, our country will be qualified to obtain the international certificate stating that Yemen is clear from child polio.
Our country has therefore been making great efforts in providing the required personnel, technical and financial capacities in order to make this campaign a success. Everybody, in all official and social institutions as well as in the concerned international organizations, has been performing their utmost to make sure that child polio will forever be eradicated in Yemen and to make the country among those free from this disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has played a key role in eradicating child polio in our country. The Representative of the WHO in Yemen praised our country’s performance, especially as it was able to eradicate child polio within the time frame previously set. He added that no child polio cases were reported in the past three years, which indicates the success of Yemen’s anti-child polio campaigns.
He also praised the strategy adopted since 1996 and said that, in the first campaign, 30% of the targeted children were vaccinated. But, due to the national campaigns, the number of vaccination jumped to 72% among children aged 1 or below.
Health Editor

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