Kick Polio Out of Africa

Health centers thoughout Burkina Faso were busy last week with a door to door vaccination campaign. Community members were trained on going house to house to give the oral polio vaccine--two drops of a liquid--to children from a day old to five years old. We also had to record how many children we vaccinated and if they were under or over a year old, mark their left hand pinkys with permanent marker to ensure they weren't vaccinated twice, and write on the outside of each house with chalk to show if some or all kids were vaccinated, if no one was home, or if there were no children living in that house.

The Ministry of Health had set a goal of 100 percent vaccination coverage during a four day period which is a very ambitious goal!!! According to my understanding its the first time that they have been expected to reach that level of coverage. My village health center serves a total of eleven villages with a basically unknown population. On paper, we were suppose to find about 5600 kids from 0-5 years to vaccinate but this number doesn't represent the kids in the village. After four days of visiting every house in our area, we were no where close to that number and so were told to continue the campaign for a fifth day. We still were only able to find about 4700 kids which put us at 85 percent, way below the goal. Its hard though because we know that the number that we were aiming for is incorrect yet were still expected to reach it. Looking at the results after the campaign ended, some areas had way over 100 percent which just goes to show that population estimates are very inaccurate!!

There was some concern that parents may not allow their kids to be vaccinated but this only occurred with one family out of all 4000+ kids and the chief ended up convincing the parents that it was essential they are vaccinated. We did have lots of adults that asked to be vaccinated though and got upset that we wouldnt. They had trouble understanding why it was necessary for children but they weren't allowed to protect themselves. We had to explain that they didn't need the vaccine since they weren't at risk like their children were. Another problem we ran into was that many parents didn't know the ages of their kids and couldn't find their health cards from when they were born. In this case we guessed liberally deciding it was better to vaccinate kids over the age of five than miss any that should receive it.

I went out during three days of the campaign and vaccinated 125 kids in the first day. The other days were much less since we were searching out the kids we had missed earlier but still probably did about 200 kids total.

By the way, the blog title comes from the styrofoam coolers and huge vests we had to wear with this slogan on it and a big picture of a soccer ball and the map of Africa. I believe they are donated by Rotary Club and they help support similiar campaigns throughout the continent using the same theme.

Now that this campaign is over we are about to start a tetanus campaign for all pregnant women in the area to be followed by round two of the polio campaign in about two weeks. Its a busy time!!!