Health workers in Syria rush to vaccinate 320,000 children amid sudden vaccine induced polio outbreak – Lunacy

‘Health officials in Syria are scrambling to urgently vaccinate 320,000 children in some of the country’s most difficult to access areas, following an outbreak of polio that has left at least 22 children paralysed. Health workers will likely have to coordinate with Isis and other extremist groups to carry out the work.
It was recently revealed that 17 children had been affected by an outbreak of vaccine-derived polio. One of the cases was in Raqqa, the de facto Syrian capital of Isis, while the remainder were in the Mayadeen district of eastern Syria.
Officials told The Independent the number of youngsters paralysed by the disease had risen to 22 and that a mass vaccination programme was soon to be launched.
“It’s very much a concern that there is a vaccine-derived polio outbreak,” said Rod Curtis, Unicef’s polio spokesperson in New York. “Our plan is to vaccinate 320,000 children under the age of five – including 90,000 in Mayadeen – using our partners on the ground. Not all the children are located in government areas.”’
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