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, the World Health Organization says.
For the past three years, the Taliban barred UN-organized vaccination teams from doing door-to-door campaigns in parts of Afghanistan under their control, apparently out of suspicion they could be spies for the government or the West. Because of the ban and ongoing fighting, some 3.3 million children over the past three years have not been vaccinated.
But WHO and the UN children's agency UNICEF said in a statement Monday that they welcomed the decision by the Taliban leadership supporting the resumption of house-to-house polio vaccinations across the country. WHO said a new nationwide vaccination campaign will begin on Nov. 8, followed by another synchronized with Pakistan's polio vaccination campaign in December.
"This is an extremely important step in the right direction," said Dapeng Luo, WHO Representative in Afghanistan. He said it was a good sign that multiple campaigns are planned. "Sustained access to all children is essential to end polio for good." Jafari said the Taliban's previous ban in its areas was "mainly for security reasons," not out of opposition to vaccinations themselves. The Taliban, he said, have committed to "the absolute protection and security of all health workers and all frontline workers" in the campaign.
"This decision will allow us to make a giant stride in the efforts to eradicate polio," said Herve Ludovic De Lys, UNICEF 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.
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