KOTA KINABALU, Jan 27 — A total of 109,232 children, aged five years and below, have been given polio vaccine in Sabah as of last Saturday under the Sabah Polio Immunisation Campaign (KIPS 2019/2020) carried out since December 27 last year.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said they comprised 27.93 per cent of the estimated 391,040 children in the age group in 25 districts in Sabah.
“This supplementary immunisation activity (SIA) is the second phase of polio vaccine control and prevention activities in Sabah where oral polio vaccine (OPV) is given to the children.
“Implementation of SIA in some districts is very challenging in terms of logistics and the safety of health staff, as they have to go by boat or wade through water and walk for three kilometres to reach the villages,”he said in a statement today.
Dr Noor Hisham thanked the health workers and volunteers for their commitment to save the country from polio.
“They are not film or TV celebrities. They are ‘the invisible public health’ and the unsung heroes. Appreciate them,” he added.
On Dec 8 last year, the Health Ministry announced that a three-month-old boy from Tuaran, Sabah, was diagnosed with polio, which was the first in Malaysia after 27 years.
Following the incident, various precautions and advocacy programmes were implemented to prevent the spread of the virus.
For the record, three polio cases have been recorded in Sabah, one each in Tuaran, Sandakan and Kinabatangan. — Bernama
