EGYPT – The Egyptian Acting Minister of Health and Population Khaled Abdel Ghaffar has launched a national campaign to vaccinate children against polio for free across the country from 27th to 30th March.
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that invades the nervous system causing total paralysis within hours.
The virus is transmitted from person-to-person mainly through the fecal-oral route or through contaminated water or food where the virus multiplies in the intestine.
The national vaccination campaign against polio has commenced in all governorates of the republic for every child under 5 years residing in Egypt regardless of their citizenship as part of the periodic campaigns organized by the ministry to raise the societal immunity of children.
Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar has urged families to vaccinate their children and protect them from polio at the nearest health unit or a health team stationed near them to preserve their health.
“The campaign’s work is being carried out by 45,000 medical teams with a total of 90,000 individuals who have been trained at the highest level,” stressed Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.
The campaign will also be conducted by the central supervision teams in the Ministry of Health and Population along with the supervisory teams in all health directorates and departments.
He emphasized that all preventive and precautionary measures are being taken against the coronavirus during the implementation of the campaign’s work to contain the spread of COVID-19.
He further pointed out that there would be available medical teams for the polio vaccination campaign in all medical centres and health units as well as in places of major gatherings such as major squares and train stations.
The Ministry of Health has also collaborated with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Solidarity and Al-Azhar campaign to facilitate polio vaccination in kindergartens and nurseries.
Egypt, Sudan sign bilateral agreement on health
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Acting Minister of Health and Population Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Health in Sudan Haitham Awadullah and Sudanese Ambassador in Cairo Mohamed Elias recently meet in Cairo to discuss bilateral cooperation.
The delegates also discussed the epidemiological situation of the Coronavirus in both countries, the rates of vaccination rollout and the importance of exchanging experience between the two countries in the fight against COVID-19.
Abdel Ghaffar highlighted that the meeting addressed increasing training opportunities for Sudanese doctors within the training programmes offered in Egypt.
The officials also agreed to expand the training programmes for Sudanese doctors to involve more subspecialties in order to enhance integrated medical services in various specialties to Sudan.
Moreover, they discussed cooperation between the Sudan and Egypt in the field of producing biological preparations as well as transferring Egypt’s expertise in the localization of the pharmaceutical industry to achieve self-sufficiency.
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