Editorial: Get children immunised against polio
Immunisation of children, according to health experts, prevents them from becoming ill with unpleasant and serious infectious diseases which have a risk of complications and long-term side effects.
It also protects all children from preventable diseases. The more people are immunised, the less of infectious diseases and also the less chance there is for anyone catching a disease. Immunisation also tries to wipe out as many infectious diseases as can be done anywhere in the world.
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Ghana’s immunisation programme, known as the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), was started in 1978 with six antigens and has over the years been expanded. Currently, children in Ghana are immunised against 13 vaccine preventable diseases on the EPI schedule and they are tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, haemophilus influenza type B diseases, Hepatitis B infection, pneumococcal diseases, rotavirus diarrhoea, measles, rubella, yellow fever, and Neisseria meningitis. Malaria is currently being piloted to be added onto the immunisation programme.
Indeed, immunisation in Ghana has been successful. According to the Ghana Health Service, these include the elimination of neonatal tetanus in Ghana in 2011; no documented death of measles between 2003 and 2021; drastic reduction in pneumonia and diarrhoea cases in children; and no case of meningitis due to Neisseria meningitis A after the Men A campaign in 2012.
Similarly, there has not been any reported case of wild polio virus in the country since 2008. This is indeed good news considering the fact that polio is very dangerous and has devastating effects on children.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among those paralysed, five to ten per cent die when their breathing muscles become immobilised. Polio mainly affects children under five years of age, however, the WHO said anyone of any age who is unvaccinated can contract the disease.
For this reason, the Junior Graphic is happy to know that many children across the country were immunised in the recent polio immunisation exercise that began on September 1 to 4 (see front page story).
According to the Programme Manager of the EPI, Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, the EPI set out to vaccinate approximately 6.3 million children in the two rounds polio immunisation campaign. The second round is from October 6 to 9. However, at the end of the first round, about 6.4 million children under five years were immunised. This is good news.
A population vaccinated against polio, means children are safe to grow up in an environment free of polio. Failure to stop or end polio leads to ongoing transmission of the virus which could not only result in the spread of the disease in the country but also lead to a global resurgence.
It is for this reason that the Junior Graphic encourages all parents and caregivers to make sure their children participate in this all-important exercise.
Some children missed the first round of the immunisation, and as Dr Amponsa-Achiano noted, it was not too late.
according to him, although it is not enough to take only one dose of the vaccine, they have the opportunity to take the second dose in the second round of the immunisation exercise.
Let us all work together to ensure a country and a world free of polio for children. No child deserves to be paralysed or die as a result of polio. Let’s get children immunised against polio and protect their future.