mOPV2 Vaccine safe – Health Director

By Gideon Ebbah, GNA

Agogo (Ash), March 13, GNA – Dr Roland Ronald Miah, the Asante-Akim North District Director of Health Services, has said the monovalent Type 2 Oral Polio Vaccine (mOPV2) is extremely safe for immunization of children under-five years in the District, saying it has proven successful in many countries.

“The mOPV2 brings additional advantage to the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), which will prevent paralytic cases but will not break transmission of the polio virus.”

“The mOPV2 prevents and has the potency to break the polio virus transmission- ensuring a sustainable protection of children against the polio virus type two”, he told the Ghana News Agency in an interview at Agogo.

The Asante-Akim North District is among the 13 districts in the Ashanti Region, which have been earmarked to conduct the immunization exercise from March 11 to 14, this year.

This follows the reported circulation of Vaccine-derived polio virus type 2 (vDPV2) in the Ahafo-Ano South East and the Sekyere-Kumawu districts.

The other districts are Sekyere Afram Plains, Sekyere East, Sekyere Central, Sekyere Kumawu, Ahafo-Ano North, Offinso and Offinso North.

The rest are Ahafo-Ano South East, Ahafo-Ano South West, Atwima Nwabiagya North, Atwima Nwabiagya South and Atwima Mponua. 

Dr Miah said the District, which was identified as one of the high risk areas, was working to immunize all the 16,663 children in its communities and villages as well as those in the hard to reach areas.

“As a direct neighbouring district of the Sekyere-Kumawu District, where there were reported cases of the cVDPV2, we are treating this mOPV2 campaign and immunization exercise in the district as a matter of urgency in order to protect our vulnerable children”, he added.

Dr Miah said effective mechanisms had been established to ensure strong and safe vial accountability of the mOPV2 among all the health workers involved in the vaccination process to guarantee sustainable control of the polio disease.

He said one of the major challenges, which could hamper the exercise, was the poor nature of roads to reach the communities.

However, he said, the District had been divided into four zones to ensure easy implementation of the exercise and appealed to parents to send their children for the vaccination.

GNA

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