Dakar, 11 December (Prensa Latina) Cuba, an example country in vaccination against poliomyelitis, was present at the Forum on the immunization and eradication of this disease in Africa which was held in the capital of Senegal, diplomatic sources reported today.
The Caribbean nation’s ambassador to Dakar, Maydolis Sosa, attended the event which was attended by the continent’s heads of state, health professionals, researchers and analysts on the subject.
During the meeting, the president of the African Union (AU), Macky Sall, urged the continent’s governments to strengthen childhood vaccination campaigns against polio.
“Immunization saves lives and is effective in preventing human suffering,” said the other president of Senegal during the opening of the Forum.
The organization’s acting leader sent a message to heads of state to reaffirm his support for the Addis Ababa Declaration on Immunization, adopted in 2017. This is necessary, he said, because health threats, old and new, they continue to proliferate.
Participants agreed that although the World Health Organization declared Africa free of this disease in 2020, some outbreaks still appear in insufficiently immunized communities, moreover, due to the interruption of vaccination campaigns due to the pandemic Covid-19, tens of millions of children have not received the drug.
Poliomyelitis is an infectious disease, caused by a virus, which has no cure and some symptoms include fever, fatigue, vomiting, headache and can cause, in some cases, paralysis of the extremities.
Until the 1950s it was endemic throughout the world and caused a large number of amputations and disabilities, but thanks to the vaccine discovered in 1950 it could be eradicated in various regions such as Europe, America and Africa.
In the case of Cuba, after the triumph of the Revolution, in 1960 the government gave priority to vaccination against poliomyelitis and despite the limitations imposed by the US blockade on the sector, in 1995 it received the Certification of Eradication from the Pan American Organization for Health .
