Polio vaccination campaign opens

A campaign against polio for children under five kicked off on Saturday in the western and southern provinces.
The first stage of the campaign aims to immunize children from the disease through oral drops administered to 227,000 children in the Jeddah governorate.
The campaign was officially launched by Jeddah Governorate Secretary Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Wafi on behalf of Jeddah Gov. Prince Mishaal bin Majed in the presence of Health Affairs Director Sami Badawood.
Badawood urged the public to “cooperate with the visiting teams to administer the oral vaccine to children.”
Khaled Bawaked, assistant director of health affairs, said: “The ministry aims to vaccinate children during the house-to-house campaign.”
The teams would visit between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and those children with valid identity cards will be vaccinated.
The second phase is scheduled to begin a month later on March 30, 2014, when the second dose of the vaccine will be administered.
Bawaked said 3,000 paramedics are participating in the Jeddah campaign.
He said while every neighborhood had fixed locations where the children could be immunized, families could avail of the vaccine in any primary health center.
Saudi Arabia is considered a polio-free country. It has not recorded a single case of polio in the last 17 years.
Along with Jeddah, the polio vaccine campaign was launched in Makkah, Madinah, Jazan and Najran.