UN-backed effort aims to vaccinate 111 million children against polio in four days

United Nations-backed campaign will seek to vaccinate more than 111 million children under the age of five against polio in 20 African countries in just four days. “The upcoming campaign in West and Central Africa will aim to cover all children, immunized or not, in order to boost their protection levels and deprive the virus of the fertile seedbed on which it depends for survival,” said the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Luis Sambo. “This exercise should bring us closer to reaching our goal of interrupting wild polio virus transmission in our region in 2012.” The campaign, which will kick off on Friday, is intended to serve as a massive boost in efforts to eradicate the disease, and will involve national health ministries and UN agencies, as well as tens of thousands of volunteers who will go from door-to-door immunizing children. In a news release today, the World Health Organization...