Mozambique: Polio vaccination campaign exceeds target, over 19M children vaccinated

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Mozambique: Polio vaccination campaign exceeds target, over 19M children vaccinated

5:29 CAT | 16 Jun 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: RTP Africa]

Mozambique vaccinated more than 19 million children under the age of 10 against polio between 2 and 6 June, exceeding the target set, health authorities announced on Monday, with another phase of vaccination planned for July.

“If the target is 18.2 million, the figure achieved was over 19 million, with total coverage above 100%, so we have exceeded the target we set,” said Quinhas Fernandes, national director of Public Health, at a press conference in Maputo to present data on vaccination against type 2 polio in a national campaign that ran from 2 June to 6 June.

National administrative coverage was 107%, ranging from 96% in the southern province of Maputo to 111% in Nampula, in northern Mozambique, he said.

Teams independent of the sector evaluate all polio vaccination campaigns through the Lot Quality Assessment System (LQAS), according to Quinhas Fernandes.

Using this method, at the end of the campaign, a random sample of 60 children per district shows that the district achieves adequate epidemiological coverage when no more than three children remain unvaccinated.

The LQAS results for this vaccination operation indicate that 131 of the 159 districts passed this assessment, representing about 82%. Among the 28 districts that needed further attention, 11 had four to six unvaccinated children, six had seven to nine unvaccinated children, and 11 had ten or more unvaccinated children, Fernandes said.

“We consider these LQAS results good, and for the second round, we will strive to improve this performance. This improvement will be crucial in controlling the outbreak of the type 2 polio variant. Even more important will be to ensure that the districts in this round will perform better in the second,” he said.

The next phase of vaccination against the type 2 polio variant will take place between 8 and 12 July, he said.

READ: Mozambique: Over three million children to be vaccinated against polio in Nampula

In May 2024, an independent team that assessed the response to the polio outbreak recommended to the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the outbreak of the disease in Mozambique and Malawi be declared over.

‘After thorough assessments in Malawi and Mozambique, an independent polio outbreak response assessment team recommended (…) that officials declare the outbreak of wild poliovirus type 1 [WPV1] over’ in both countries, ‘a significant milestone in the fight against polio in the African region,’ the WHO said in a statement at the time.

This new polio immunisation campaign took place in areas with high population density, including schools, health centres, markets, churches, mosques, and border areas, as well as door-to-door, according to Health Minister Ussene Isse.

“This campaign, in addition to vaccinating, will also focus on intensifying the active search for suspected cases of infantile paralysis through community surveillance. We will also take this opportunity to intensify social promotion and mobilisation activities in favour of routine vaccination,” Ussene added at the time.

The Health Minister stated that the campaign trained approximately 82,000 workers, and planners estimate its cost to be around $15 million (more than €13 million).

Doctors can prevent and eradicate polio through the administration of a safe, simple and effective vaccine.

Source: Lusa