Feb 7, 2013

Egypt. The Health Ministry plans to start a special campaign of polio vaccination.

The Health Ministry's preventative medicine department issued a state of alert regarding the discovery of the polio virus in the sewers of Cairo's Hagana district.

The ministry is responding by vaccinating children in the district, and plans to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign next.

 “We have vaccinated 150,000 children in the area,” said Abdel Ati Alim, undersecretary for preventive medicine, adding that the ministry would vaccinate 3 million children starting in March in Shubra, Khanka, Kerdasa and the outskirts of Cairo and Giza. The campaign would then go countrywide to vaccinate 12 million more children.