By NewsDesk  @bactiman63

The Cuban Ministry of Health (Ministerio de Salud Pública de la República de Cuba) announced today that a polio vaccination campaign will begin Monday.

Image/Robert Herriman

From February 22 to 27, Campaign 60 for Bivalent Oral Polio Vaccination will begin with the purpose of keeping polio eliminated in Cuba.

Some 330,000 children under three years of age will receive the first dose, and 124,000 children of nine years of age will also be reactivated with the vaccine.

Vaccination points were set up in medical offices that, together with the vaccinations of the polyclinics, will prevent crowds and bring service to the community.

Poliomyelitis is a vaccine-preventable disease caused by poliovirus that causes acute flaccid paralysis with notable motor disability in infants.

In Cuba, only two diseases preventable by vaccines were eliminated before 1962: yellow fever, in 1908, and smallpox, in 1923.

Between 1962 and until 2021, several other vaccine-preventable diseases remain eliminated.

Tetanus, Haemophilus influenzae type b meningitis, typhoid fever and meningococcal disease are no longer a health problem with rates below 0.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.