August saw multiple countries address polio through outbreak response drives, local campaigns, or national efforts.
- The U.K. in August began offering an extra dose of inactivated polio vaccine to all children ages 1-9 in London following the detection of cVDPV2 in wastewater from the British capital. The booster campaign—which aims to reach nearly 1 million children—is in addition to a polio vaccine catch-up campaign across London, where childhood vaccination uptake is lower than the rest of the country. K. government; BBC
- Nigeria’s Borno state ran a four-day vaccination campaign against polio August 10-13 that reached over 2.3 million children under age 5 with novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2). An additional six rounds of the exercise will be carried out before year-end. Radio Nigeria; Sun News Online
- Malawi kicked off the third round of a polio outbreak response campaign on August 11, targeting around 4 million children under age 5 with oral polio drops. The country declared a wild poliovirus outbreak in February and ran the first two rounds of the four-round effort in April. WHO
Pakistan launched its third nationwide polio campaign of 2022 on August 22. The door-to-door five-day effort will deploy around 392,000 frontline workers to provide oral drops to about 43.3 million children under age 5 across 108 districts. Campaign activities started on August 15 in Karachi and South Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and on August 29 in Balochistan. Despite tightened security for the polio workers—including thousands of police personnel and hundreds of police patrol vehicles—shooters opened fire on a polio vaccination team in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the campaign’s second day, killing two policemen. Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme; UrduPoint; Daily Times; ABC