Kabul. For the first time since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, a nationwide polio vaccination campaign will begin on November 8. UNICEF announced this on Monday. The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF welcome the decision by the Taliban, which supports the resumption of door-to-door operations across the country, the agency said in a statement.
The campaign will be the first to reach all children in Afghanistan in three years, covering more than 3.3 million children across the country, Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying. In addition, a second nationwide polio vaccination campaign has also been agreed, which will be combined with Pakistan’s own polio campaign in December.
Dapeng Luo, WHO’s representative in Afghanistan, said it was an extremely important step in the right direction. We know that polio vaccine doses provide the best protection, so we are pleased to see that another campaign is planned before the end of this year. Continuous access to all children is essential to ending polio. This should remain a top priority.
UNICEF’s representative in Afghanistan, Hervé Ludovic de Lis, said the decision would allow us to take a major step forward in polio eradication efforts. “To completely eradicate polio, every child in every household in Afghanistan should be vaccinated and that is what we are going to do with our partners. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two remaining polio endemic countries in the world,” he said.
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