Jonglei Launches Polio Eradication Campaign

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

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The Health and Environment Minister Jehan Mechak Deng said that polio eradication campaign will improve the general sanitation and promote public health.

“As the ministry of health is here to promote and provide care, the community which is you have a role to play through maintaining cleanliness and sanitation, it has been stated that polio is a disease that come from lack of cleanliness and sanitation,” Mechak Deng said.

Minister Mechak said the national campaign aims at eradicating the disease by immunizing all children less than five years of age across the country.

Jehan Mechak said they have been doing campaign not only for vaccination but making campaign about the importance and cleanliness.

“If you clean your hands and use the water on a regular basis then you are elevating, you will come to a next level of keeping yourself and the environment clean and in that way you are also promoting health for yourself and your community,” she said.

She said that the communities know that the government of Jonglei state has been campaigning about the importance of having a toilet or a pit latrine at home.
“Now from the ministry of health we have got international agencies such as World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations (UN) agencies like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) which are helping us reduce the effects of illness in our families,” said Mechak.

The State Governor Kuol Manyang Juuk said that polio is a dangerous disease to the children less than five years if not prevented adding that he is happy with the improvement.

“I am happy to hear that for the last four years there have not been any cases of polio disease reported in South Sudan,” Kuol said.

Polio eradication is said to have started since 1988 by the World Health Assembly (WHA) to remove wild polio virus out of the face of the world as polio used to cripple more than 300, 000 children per year with lifelong disability, Doctor Engenye Charles from IMA said on Monday.

Polio paralyzes unimmunized children and it can be transmitted from child to child through stool.

South Sudan has been polio free for 45 months as the last case of polio in South Sudan was reported in June 2009.

The disease immunization campaign which will cover all parts of Jonglei state and south Sudan will start tomorrow today and will end on March 22.