Taliban allows new polio vaccination campaign for children under 5 across Afghanistan for the first time since 2018
UN agencies are gearing up to vaccinate all of Afghanistan’s children under 5 against polio for the first time since 2018, after the Taliban agreed to the campaign.
Because of the ban and ongoing fighting, some 3.3 million children over the past three years have not been vaccinated. But the World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a statement on Monday that they welcomed the decision by the Taliban leadership supporting the resumption of house-to-house polio vaccinations across the country.Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
In other areas, door-to-door campaigns were impossible because of fighting between the government and the insurgents, or because of fears of kidnappings or roadside bombs. In some places, hard-line clerics spoke out against vaccinations, calling them un-Islamic or a Western plot. “Restarting polio vaccination in all areas of Afghanistan now will prevent a major resurgence of polio outbreaks within the country and ensure there is no international spread,” Jafari said.
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