March 2019: Somalia conducts polio vaccination drive

Somalia conducted a four-day polio vaccination drive for children under five this month. The campaign, which ran from March 24-27, included 15,000 vaccinators “traversing the country on foot, and by car, camel and donkey” to reach 3.1 million children. In addition to mapping out houses and institutions to visit, the government worked with more than 1,300 nomadic elders to reach nomadic and rural settlements. According to GPEI’s update last week, no new cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus have been reported in the country in 2019 so far. This is the fourth major polio vaccination drive in Somalia since December 2017. WHO; GPEI