Four-Day Polio Vaccination Campaign to Begin in Eastern Afghanistan

A four-day polio vaccination campaign is set to begin today (Monday) in the eastern provinces of the country.

Officials say that during the campaign, nearly 1.5 million children under the age of five will receive two drops of the polio vaccine.

The head of the Expanded Program on Immunization in the eastern region, Hekmat Khan Gulabzoy, said: “This campaign will continue for four days across all four eastern provinces. All children under the age of five will be vaccinated. In Nangarhar alone, we have targeted 950,000 children, while a total of 1.45 million children have been targeted across the eastern zone.”

Nangarhar’s Director of Public Health, Aminullah Sharif, said: “We call on all young people, religious scholars, and schools to cooperate during this campaign and take their children to vaccinators so that no child is left unvaccinated.”

Ghulam Haider, a 25-year-old resident of Kot district in Nangarhar who contracted polio due to not being vaccinated, said he now faces serious difficulties because of his disability.

, Ghulam Haider said: “Because I was not vaccinated against the polio virus, I became paralyzed in my legs at the age of two. My parents did not vaccinate me. My childhood passed with many hardships, and now that I am an adult, I use a wheelchair instead of walking and face serious challenges.”

Local residents also consider the polio vaccine effective in preventing the disease and are calling on every family to fulfill their responsibility in this regard.

A resident of Jalalabad city, Karamat Khan, said: “Polio is a dangerous and deadly disease. Religious scholars and community elders should encourage people to vaccinate their children against the polio virus.”

Another Jalalabad resident, Raza Khan, said: “I urge all parents to vaccinate their children under the age of five during this polio campaign so that Afghanistan can be free of this virus.”

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries where polio cases are still being reported. Polio is a dangerous viral disease that can cause lifelong paralysis in children. Health workers say that the only effective way to prevent polio is timely vaccination, as there is no cure for the disease.