GOSS Working To Eradicate Polio

23 February 2011 – (Juba) – The GOSS ministry of health has reiterated it’s commitment to ensure that southern Sudan is polio-free.

Speaking during the launch of the national polio immunization
+campaign in Rajaf payam, Central Equatoria state, the GOSS undersecretary in the ministry of health Dr. Olivia Lomoro called on parents and guardians to support the program for it to be successful.

[Dr. Olivia]: “As we prepare for a country, we want to reiterate the commitment of the Government of Southern Sudan to ensure that its people are healthy, and to ensure that we have a polio free country, and that is why we had to have all this series of campaigns. We hope that our communities will be able to support us in this process, its not only the role of the ministry of health, the community has a role, the mothers have a role to ensure that they bring out their children so that they can get the immunization. We have already heard that we can have several polio vaccines and it will not harm us instead it will be more effective and it will ensure that our children will not have polio.”

Speaking at the same occasion, Central Equatoria state minister of health Dr. Emmanuel Ija Baya said that his ministry will work to ensure the disease is eradicated.

[Emmanuel Ija]: “We want to eradicate it, we want to eliminate it, and for the last two years there have been no cases, but we have to insist that we have eliminated polio, because I learned that our neighbors are still having cases of the disease.”

The polio immunization campaigns which started yesterday, Tuesday is expected to end on the 25th of February 2011.