New Emergency Immunization Plan Launched to Protect Horn of Africa, as Polio Is Confirmed in Somalia

GENEVA -- The Global Polio Eradication Initiative—spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and UNICEF—today launched an ambitious new series of polio immunization campaigns to prevent the re-establishment of the disease in the Horn of Africa. The new plan comes as a polio case is confirmed in Mogadishu, Somalia, a country which had been polio-free since 2002.

The plan will see large-scale series of immunization campaigns coordinated across eight countries—Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and parts of Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—between September and November. The campaigns will reach more than 34 million children with multiple doses of polio vaccine and rapidly boost population immunity in the Horn of Africa. The rapid and large-scale response is largely possible due to a US$25 million grant provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and support by other donors including the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO).