Health workers from Joburg will immunise children under five against polio

RELATED LINKS: Joburg summons 285 000 kids for polio jabs HEALTH WORKERS around the City will have their hands full administering polio and measles vaccines to more than 285 000 of Johannesburg's children of five years and under when a national immunisation campaign kicks off on Monday 26 July. Read more Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases Unit COMMUNICABLE diseases are diseases that are infectious and parasitic, infecting mostly children from poor communities. Bad living conditions make these children susceptible to otherwise preventable illnesses. Examples are malnutrition, polio, tuberculosis and measles. Read more Major public hospitals and clinics STREET addresses and telephone numbers of municipal community clinics, provincial hospitals, and care centres, are arranged alphabetically by suburb. Read more

Polio campaign in Joburg Following the recent outbreak of the wild polio virus in Namibia, an extensive polio immunisation programme for children under five years will be launched at hospitals, clinics and pharmacies around Johannesburg. September 27, 2006 By Tammy O'Reilly THE City of Johannesburg is embarking on an extensive campaign to immunise all children aged five and under against polio from 8 to 20 October. Immunisation points will be set up all around Johannesburg at public and private hospitals and clinics, as well as mobile clinics and pharmacies. Parents have also been informed that healthcare workers will be visiting daycare centres, pre-schools, crèches and homecare institutions to administer the vaccine. Seen as a childhood disease, polio is a highly infectious disease that causes sudden paralysis of the limbs, and if a person is not treated, death may occur if the respiratory muscles of the chest are affected. South Africa has been free of wild poliovirus for over 15 years, but following the re-emergence of the disease in neighbouring Namibia, the national Department of Health is on high alert and will be initiating the campaign countrywide. In South Africa, all children routinely receive five doses of the polio vaccine to be sufficiently protected against the disease - at birth, 6 weeks old, 10 weeks old, 14 weeks old, 18 months and five years old. During last year's routine immunisation, the City only received an 87 percent coverage rate. This year they are aiming to cover more than 90 percent of children as this is the rate that needs to be maintained to prevent an outbreak should someone be infected. "We are trying to reach every child in the city that falls into the five and under age group," said Antonia Bernard, assistant director of Public Health. "Even if your child has already been given a vaccine, we are going to go around giving additional doses. Parents need to understand that this additional dose is not harmful to their child." She added that the reasons the City did not reach their target were religious beliefs, anti-vaccination lobbyists and people with no access to health care. The vaccines are administered orally in the form of drops. Permission to use web site material Publishers may use material from this site free of charge, as long as: Credit is given to either the "City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za)" or to "Johannesburg News Agency (www.joburg.org.za)"; If the article is used online, a link is provided to the original article on this website; The name of the article's author is acknowledged; The webmaster is informed of how and where the material is used (fill in this brief online form). Johannesburg News Agency is operated by BIG Media at 011-484-1400 Print this Page E-mail this article to a friend Help using Joburg.org.za