ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq is targeting more than five million children in the first polio vaccination campaign in 14 years, after a case of the illness was found in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
A six-month-old boy was found to have paralysis in both limbs, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Last year, polio was also detected in neighboring Syria.
Thousands of families have been flocking to health centers all over Iraq for oral polio vaccinations. The health ministries of the autonomous Kurdistan Region and of the Iraqi government in Baghdad are cooperating with UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) to ensure that at least 95 percent of all children are vaccinated.
“The sectarian violence in Iraq and the Syrian crisis are the main reasons that the virus spreads easily, as war doesn’t allow health organizations to reach these places for prevention,” said UNICEF health specialist Qasim Othman Mawlood.
The Syrian crisis, which is in its third year, has forced tens of thousands of refugees to flee to Iraq. “More than 20 polio cases were detected in Syria. The possibility that the virus crosses international borders is a big threat for the region,” said Mawlood.
Violence between armed groups and Iraqi forces in the western Anbar province has forced thousands to flee to the Kurdistan Region, complicating matters for the vaccination campaign.
“It is hard to get all the Iraqi displaced people vaccinated in Kurdistan, as they are staying in hotels and motels and their number is not clear,” said Dr. Khalis Kader, a spokesman of the Kurdistan Health Ministry. “But our target is to vaccinate some 690,000 children in Kurdistan in addition to 13,000 children amongst the Syrian refugees in the region.”
The Kurdistan Region has taken in some 250,000 Syrian refugees, most of them Kurds.
In order to reach all these children, Kader has 300 staff members to supervise 1,724 teams across Kurdistan, including the refugee camps. The present campaign takes five days and will be repeated three times this year.
Since the Syrian outbreak last year, mass polio vaccination campaigns are held in seven countries, targeting some 22 million children under the age of five. UNICEF blames a virus of Pakistani origin, which was detected in Egypt and then spread to Syria.
“In the past we used to inject the vaccine, but now we just give every child two drops,” said Dr. Shwan Jammal at one of the health centers in Erbil. “Now children worry less.”
One of the problems Jammal and his colleagues face is that people do not understand how important the vaccination is, he said. “They resist having their children vaccinated. A doctor has to sit with the family and gently explain about the virus.”
Polio is an infectious viral disease that spreads easily and mostly affects children under the age of five. The virus can be transmitted through contaminated food or water, and multiplies in the intestines, from where it can suppress the nervous system and cause paralysis.
Iraq has been free of the illness since 2000, when the last case was found in the Diyala governorate.
Because of vaccination, worldwide polio cases have decreased by 99 percent since 1988. Today, only Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan remain polio endemic, down from more than 125 countries in 1998, according to WHO statistics.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, where most of the Syrian refugees have settled, dozens of children queued at a health center in Erbil for their polio drops.
