Taliban launch new campaign to vaccinate 5.3 million children against polio in Afghanistan

MADRID, 23 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Taliban have announced on Monday the launch of a vaccination campaign against polio in 16 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan that seeks to immunize about 5.4 million children, after the World Health Organization (WHO ) highlighted in December that the country had made "significant progress" in the fight against the disease.

The Afghan Ministry of Health has indicated that it has plans to carry out this campaign in 178 districts of the country and has called on Islamic scholars and members of the security forces to cooperate with medical workers, in an attempt to prevent further attacks on the vaccination campaign, as reported by the official news agency Bakhtar News.

The WHO noted in December that only two cases of polio were registered in 2022, compared to 56 in 2020. That same month, the Taliban launched a campaign to immunize seven million children in 26 of the country's 34 provinces.

Polio, a highly contagious disease that mainly affects children, is transmitted mainly by the fecal-oral route, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The virus is endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, after Nigeria declared its eradication in 2020.

Vaccination campaigns have run into difficulties in Afghanistan and Pakistan due to conspiracy theories that immunization causes infertility or that medical workers are spies, leading to numerous attacks on them or the agents who are deployed to strengthen your security. Before seizing power in 2021, the Taliban banned these campaigns in areas under their control.