This year's house-to-house polio immunisation programme began on Monday with a target of five million children under five years.

Some 45,000 volunteers will be in the field with 100 million doses of polio vaccines. Outgoing Health Minister, Dr Richard Anane joined a team of health officials and volunteers to administer the poliovirus vaccines to children under-five years in communities and schools under Nii Boye Town and Abeka Lapaz in Accra.

The immunisation is the first part of this year's house-to-house exercise to immunise children against polio.

Poliomyelitis, which is one of the five childhood killer diseases, is highly infectious and is caused by a virus that affects children under the age of five. It invades the nervous system and could cause paralysis in a matter of hours and in some cases death. It has no cure and its effects are irreversible.

The second round will be organised from November 26 to 28 and there will be the distribution of Vitamin A in addition to the Oral Poliovirus Vaccine.

The exercise is synchronised with other 14 ECOWAS countries and it will be organised across the three borders around the country.

The Ministry of Health is conducting the exercise in collaboration with WHO, UNICEF, USAID, Japanese Government, Rotary International, Canadian International Development Agency and Centre for Disease Control of the USA, The Netherlands.