The Ministry of Health (MISAU) has announced that the national vaccination campaign against type 2 poliomyelitis reached a total of 19 million children aged up to 10 years, with an investment of 15 million US dollars. According to Lusa, Quinhas Fernandes, National Director of Public Health, stated that the campaign exceeded its initial target of vaccinating 18.2 million children across the country. The campaign took place from June 2 to 6.
Fernandes explained that all vaccination activities against this disease are assessed by independent teams outside the health sector through the Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) method.
“With this method, at the end of the campaign, a study is conducted based on a random sample of 60 children per district. If more than three children in the sample are found not to have been vaccinated, it means the district is not adequately covered from an epidemiological standpoint,” he clarified. In this context, Fernandes revealed that the LQAS results for this campaign indicate that 131 out of 159 districts passed the assessment, representing about 82%.
“Among the 28 districts that did not pass, 11 had four to six unvaccinated children, six had seven to nine, and 11 had ten or more unvaccinated children,” he added.
“These LQAS results are considered good. However, for the second round, we must strive to improve this performance. This will be crucial to control the type 2 polio variant outbreak. We must ensure that the districts that did not pass this round show better results in the second phase, which will take place from July 8 to 12 this year,” he declared.
In May 2024, an independent team assessing the response to the polio outbreak recommended to the World Health Organization (WHO) that the outbreak in Mozambique and Malawi be officially declared over.
Poliomyelitis, also known as polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute contagious disease caused by a virus that lives in the intestine. It can infect children and adults through contact with feces or oral secretions from infected individuals.
Source: Diário Económico
