Feb 24, 2021(Nyamilepedia) — Over 100,000 eligible children in South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal state are believed to have missed out on the polio Vaccination campaign that was being carried out in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State last week.
According to John Agany Deng, Director for Primary Healthcare in the state’s ministry of health, the polio vaccination campaign that commenced on Tuesday and ran up to Friday had targeted 290,452 but had fallen short only managing to immunize 177,000 children.
“It ended but still we have some children that we are counting on the vaccines and then the vaccines from all posts will be taken back to the state,” Hohn Agany said.
“We have a target we were supposed to reach 290242. Currently we have reached 177,000 and then the rest we didn’t receive the report,” he continued.
Santino Ngong Chan, the head of the State Extended Program on Immunization (EPI) while reporting on the progress observed that some villages were missed during the process.
He said that they are yet to receive final reports from all the areas covered, the data that id in their hands at the moment shows that only 61 percent completion had been reported.
Santino attributed the poor performance of the campaign on some people refusing the vaccine to be administered to their children. He also noted that vaccinators were overwhelmed.
“The campaign is over, only some challenges pending. We have missed some villages and we have captured some villages. Yes, the report that reached us is 61 percent but the reports are still coming now so we will have some of the field supervisors bringing in the report,” said Chan.
According to Director for Primary Healthcare in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State’s ministry of health, John Agany, the ministry is still waiting for reports from some counties so as to determine whether another vaccination campaign will be carried out.
