Malawi Measles campaign on promising note
Communities and School going children have responded positively to the ongoing National Integrated Measles- Rubella vaccination campaign within the Area 18 Health Centre catchment areas.
A random check on Wednesdays and Thursday revealed encouraging turn up to most centres within the catchment area of the health Centre.
“Communities have embraced the campaignand they are coming up in large numbers. So far so good and we are hoping that by the end of the exercise will have required targets,” Health Surveillance Assistant (HAS) for Area 18 Health Centre, Esther Mamba disclosed this at Mphungu LEA School.
She said the campaign which started Monday national wide has received the much needed support of from most people within our catchment area.
“We are providing the vaccination to both pupils and children from various communities within the catchment area. We are also deworming children from 6 months to five years and providing Vitamin A supplement. The response is so far encouraging.” Mamba explained .
She cited that overwhelming support their team got on Monday when they went to administer the vaccination at Tsokankanansi School in Area 43.
The HSA said the school has an enrolment of 700 pupilsand 677 were vaccinated, the remaining number are said to be those that sat for standard eight examinations.
“We were at Kapeni and Jailo Schools where were told that there were 980 pupils in total but we managed to have 1,413 children vaccinated and this included children from the surrounding areas,” she narrated.
Mamba pointed out that the current strike by teachers has not affected the campaign and the schools seem to have already arranged for the exercise.
A teacher at Mphungu School, Ms Chikopa added that pupils were made aware of the exercise sometime back and the mobilization has not been a problem.
She said all our pupils were told to report on Monday to do the exercise and they came in their numbers.
“We are hoping that the exercise will have a positive impact to our pupils since we made sure that every pupil should vaccinated and we are recording every vaccination in our books,” Chikopa added.
The Area 18 Health center covers schools like Chimutu, Mphungu, Nankhaka, Chatuwa , Kalonga in area 49,Kapeni, Kapita, Mvama, Kauma, Pentecost, Giraffe , Nkomachi and Christian Heritage , Mount Sinai just to mention a few.,
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