Health Ministry receives 2.5 million doses of Polio vaccine from WHO

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28  -- Health Ministry has received 2.5 million doses of the monovalent oral polio vaccine type 2 from the World Health Organisation (WHO) as additional vaccine to curb the spread of polio in Sabah. 

Its director general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the vaccine supply supplied by United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) would be given to one million children under the age of 13 in Sabah.

“Vaccine mOPV2 supplied by UNICEF is additional vaccine needed in addition to the bOPV vaccine provided by the government to ensure complete protection from the polio virus.

“Both types of vaccine (mPOV and bPOV) will provide protection to children and prevent the spread of polio virus to other children. All children below the age of 13 will be given both types of OPV vaccine regardless of their immunisation status,” he said in a statement on the ministry’s official website.

 Dr Noor Hisham said the OPV vaccine was safe and should be given several times for optimum effect, so parents and guardians, kindergartens and schools were urged to ensure that the children took it.

Recently, Malaysia recorded three polio cases involving a three-month-old baby from Tuaran, an eight-year-old child from Sandakan and 11-year-old from Kinabatangan in Sabah. 

A three-year-old healthy child with no symptoms from Semporna was found to be positive for polio virus through the targeted healthy children sampling while five samplings of sewage water in Kota Kinabalu and Semporna also contained positive polio virus.  

As a control measure, the government has issued additional allocation to carry out bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine immunisation campaign for children across Sabah since Dec 27, 2019.

-- BERNAMA