Cuba’s first stage of 64 Anti-Polio Vaccination Campaign

Havana, Apr 21st. - The first stage of 64 Oral Bivalent Anti-Polio Campaign began today in Cuba until April 26, for all children over a month old and without turning three.

Infants in these age groups who cannot receive anti-polio, because they are sick or other causes, will have a week of recovery, between 28 April and 3 May.

In the second phase of this campaign, scheduled from 16 to 21 June, they will receive another dose and the anti-polymythic vaccine will be reactivated for nine-year-olds, according to the scheme of the national vaccination programme. Likewise, these will have days of recovery, from 23 to 28 June, to prevent a single child from being left unprotected against this disease.

Until the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, polio in Cuba was an endemic evil that left about 300 minors, each year, suffering from paralysis after contracting the disease.

The American continent was the first to achieve its elimination, and Cuba was the first country in the region to do so.

This first campaign had, as a general objective, to control the incidence of the disease and, as a specific objective, to immunize two doses of anti-polymyolithic vaccine to two million 567 thousand 803 children under 15 years of age, which were 35 per cent of the total population of the country.

Two million 216 thousand 22 children under 15 years of age were then immunized for a coverage of 86.2 per cent.

Polio appeared in our Caribbean nation in the late 19th century and from 1932 to 1962 413 thousand were registered and 430 died.

The country suffered five major epidemics, in 1934, 1942, 1946, 1952 and 1955 of this ancestral disease, which was estimated to have affected the world more than three thousand years ago.

The World Health Organization has pointed out that one in 200 infections produces irreversible paralysis, mainly of the legs, and from five to 10 percent of these cases, die from immobility of the respiratory muscles.

In 1995, Cuba received the Certification of Polio Eradication by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). (PL) (Photo: Internet taken)