Polio News - February 2012 Edition

Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)'s Polio News, February 2012, shares news and information about polio eradication efforts worldwide in the wake of the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Selected news items include:

• Rotary International prepared for the organisation's birthday celebrations the week of February 23; Rotarians around the world marked the occasion by lighting up globally recognisable landmarks with the "End Polio Now" message.
• In efforts to find new ways to reach children that live in areas plagued by insecurity, Afghanistan is preparing to send out Permanent Polio Vaccination Teams. These teams are formed by members of local communities and tasked with vaccinating every child under five living within their jurisdiction once every quarter. They will travel from house to house on an ongoing basis and will therefore be able to visit children whenever a lull in insecurity allows.
• In conjunction with keeping written records, health workers mark the outside of each house they visit in chalk, indicating how many children were vaccinated out of all the children who live in the house. This means that if a couple of the children are out playing, for example, the vaccination team can easily find the house again when they come back to vaccinate them. Or if the parents in a household refuse to vaccinate their children, someone can revisit them later to have a discussion and address their concerns. "Such a simple technique has had a powerful impact on the quality of polio vaccination campaigns, proving that innovations do not have to be highly scientific to be effective."
• "Besides technical know-how, public trust in polio vaccination is crucial to the success of polio eradication." Amongst the ideas developed by Pakistani Rotarians to encourage parents to vaccinate their children: a downloadable polio eradication ring tone, polio eradication "walks", and seminars. Meanwhile, polio eradication public service announcements (PSAs) featuring Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, the daughter of President Asif Ali Zardari and his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, were played on the state-run television channels in the lead-up to the recent National Immunization Days beginning on January 30.

Editor's note, October 27 2017: This document is no longer available online.