Mchinji parents give overwhelming support to oral polio vaccination

Parents and guardians in Mchinji district gave overwhelming support to the supplementary polio immunization campaign, which ran from July 12 – 15 2023.

At the national level, the campaign, which had a door-to-door approach in addition to the facility-based administration, targeted 8.8 million children of under 15 years of age while Mchinji District Hospital had set a target of 291, 650 children.

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By Thursday morning, most centres had already exhausted their allocated doses as more parents and guardians flocked to the centres to have their children and wards vaccinated against the disease.

Speaking to journalists on a tour sponsored by UNICEF, Charity Joseph of Chitedze Village in Traditional Authority Dambe commended the Ministry of Health commended the door-to-door arrangement, saying it helped them save on the cost of travelling to and from the health centre.

“I have four children. All of them have been vaccinated right here at my backyard,” said Joseph.

Mchinji District Hospital Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) Coordinator, Davis Sambikeni, attributed the success of the campaign to the change of mindset among parents and guardians.

Sambikeni said most parents and guardians now understand and appreciate the importance of vaccinating their children against various diseases.