Kathmandu, Jan. 9:Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) in co-operation with the government and World Health Organisation (WHO) today organised an orientation seminar on Role of Media for Polio Immunisation to assist the government in its campaign to eradicate the disease from the country.
The government is observing Sub-National Immunisation Day (NID) on January 15, February 27 and March 26 as a part of the WHO campaign to eradicate polio from the world by 2000. Nepal launched the campaign in 1996 with the WHO initiatives aiming to wipe out the disease from the country.
Speakers of the seminar said that media could play an important role in making the campaign effective by creating public awareness about the vaccination.
“Health education is inevitable in creating awareness among the rural people about the importance of the immunisation,” said State Minister for Information and Communications Govinda Bahadur Shah.
Minister Shah commended FNJ’s attempts to assist the government in the immunisation campaign.
From the chair, FNJ President Suresh Acharya appealed to all the working journalists to actively involve in the campaign and make it a great success.
Dr. Hukum Dev Shah, chief of Child Health Division at the Ministry of Health, said that the number of polio cases sharply decreased within the last decade. “The number came down to about three thousand by the end of 1999 from more than 35 thousand in 1988.”
He informed that under the SNID 2.4 million children were being vaccinated from 33 ‘high risk’ districts, including the three districts of the Kathmandu Valley.
Most of the Terai districts are considered high-risk areas because they are bordered with India, one of the highly polio infested countries in the world. About 85 per cent of the total polio cases are found in the Indian sub-continent.
WHO Medical Officer Dr. Jean Smith said that polio would the second disease to be eradicated from the face of the earth after smallpox that was completely wiped out from the world in 1979. “We can achieve the goal with collective efforts from all the concerned individuals and organisations.”