Health Ministry: National anti-polio vaccination campaign reaches 2.3 million children, terrorists blocked campaign in Idleb and Raqqa

Damascus, SANA – Ministry of Health said Tuesday that the national anti-polio campaign, carried out in cooperation with World Health Organization (WHO) and The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) between 16 to 20 of October, reached 2.3 million children under five.

In a statement to SANA, Health Minister Nizar Yazigi said that the campaign reached 2,324,720 children under five , while the armed terrorist groups prevented teams of vaccination from delivering the vaccines to the provinces of Idleb and al-Raqqa, as part of their terrorist exercises against citizens in which they prevented them from getting their rights.

Yazigi pointed out that the performance of the National Vaccination program workers and the roaming vaccination teams contributed to reaching “these good results”, in addition to the cooperation of the children’s families.

The Minister reaffirmed that the vaccine is free of charges, safe, and available at all medical centers, pointing out that the Ministry is continuous to exert efforts for providing the best environment to immunize children against diseases of childhood covered in the national vaccination program and improve the coverage percentage of all vaccines.

Minister Yazigi noted that the strict strategy adopted by the Ministry for combating polio enabled to halt the spread of this epidemic, as no cases occurred since December of 2014.

The campaign aimed at reaching 2.8 million children under five with the Ministry distributing 3 million vaccine doses and employing 4486 health workers, 1560 qualified volunteers, 3891 mobile teams and 864 cars have to carry out the vaccination campaign.

R. Milhem / Ghossoun

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