Afghanistan polio campaign: health workers to go house-to-house

WHO and Unicef say the Taliban have agreed to support the campaign

An Afghan health worker administers the polio vaccine to a child during a vaccination campaign on the outskirts of Jalalabad in 2016. AFP

A house-to-house polio vaccination drive will begin in Afghanistan next month after the Taliban government agreed to support the campaign, the World Health Organisation and Unicef said on Monday.

Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan are the last countries in the world with endemic polio, an incurable and highly infectious disease transmitted through sewage that can cause crippling paralysis in young children.

Polio has been virtually eliminated globally through a decades-long inoculation drive.

But insecurity, inaccessible terrain, mass displacement and suspicion of outside interference have hampered mass vaccination in Afghanistan and some areas of Pakistan.

Health workers are due to begin the campaign on November 8. It will be the first in more than three years aimed at all children in the country, including more than 3 million in remote and previously inaccessible areas.

"This decision will allow us to make a giant stride in the efforts to eradicate polio," said Herve Ludovic De Lys, Unicef’s representative in Afghanistan.

"To eliminate polio completely, every child in every household across Afghanistan must be vaccinated, and with our partners, this is what we are setting out to do," he said.

A second campaign, due to begin in co-ordination with a campaign in Pakistan in December, has also been agreed.

According to figures compiled before the collapse of the Western-backed government in August, there was one reported case of the wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in Afghanistan in 2021, compared with 56 in 2020.

Until the disease is eliminated completely, it remains a threat to human health in all countries, especially for those with vulnerable health systems, because of the risk of importing the disease.