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Bulawayo Bureau
THE Ministry of Health and Child Care has reached 1,1 million people with its second dose of cholera vaccination.
The first was administered last year when the ministry reached about 900 000 people.
Government successfully concluded the cholera vaccination programme which targeted the disease outbreak hotspots in the country.
In a telephone interview yesterday, the Director of Epidemiology and Disease Control in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, Dr Portia Manangazira, said 90 percent of the target population was vaccinated.
The vaccination programme primarily targeted communities in Harare and Chitungwiza.
She said the most efficient campaign was among the 5-14 year age group.
“We managed to reach 1,1 million people this time and we had about 122 000 new people getting vaccinated, compared to the numbers we had last year, that was just slightly below a million, at about 980 000,” she said.
“Public response was very good and we commend our teams and members of the public for the good co-operation that gave us such results,” said Dr Manangazira.
She said the ministry had managed to reach out to some religious sects which were previously difficult to convince to undergo vaccination, especially some sectors of the apostolic faith.
“We had very good response from some members of the apostolic sects which have been difficult to penetrate and include in any health campaigns. We managed to establish good relations with the religious leaders who then made it easy for our teams to interact with their members. We commend them for choosing to cooperate with health officials as this makes our efforts of keeping the water-borne diseases at bay,” said Dr Manangazira.
She said there was need for urban councils to do their part in ensuring that residents had access to clean water and sanitation facilities, to avoid open defecation and other red flags that contributed to water-borne disease outbreaks.
“Our clarion call now is that responsible authorities here in Harare and other areas must make it a point that they provide clean water and adequate sanitation services to the people as failure will mean that three years down the line when the vaccine wears off, we may encounter the same problem. When we vaccinate people we are not dealing with the root cause, the root cause is dirt, unhygienic environments and lack of proper clean water sources and sanitation services,” said Dr Manangazira.
Last month, the ministry carried out a successful typhoid vaccination programme which reached over 350 000 people, with a success rate of 85 percent.
Online Reporter