Uganda has not recorded a single case of polio in five years. Though the story did not make it to the front page of newspapers and leading item on the FM stations, it is easily one of the most significant of recent years.
This result has been the product of a successful aggressive mass immunisation campaign. In the last three years, because of controversy world wide about the side effects of child immunisation vaccines, and the fact that that debate was picked up by the Ugandan media, immunisation rates have gone down. Keeping polio at bay is the kind of success story the health authorities could exploit to give immunisation the desired impetus.
When the immunisation campaign was at its best, the ministry of Health used to run a moving TV advert of a group of children playing football, while one of them stands by the side watching because he had been disabled by polio. That advert used to tag at the heart, and it’s doubtful that an average parent seeing that would not take their child to be immunised.
We need to return to a similar age of imagination. It should be able to fight many other diseases with equal success in Uganda.


October 10, 2002 01:16:35

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