Sunyani, March 27, GNA - Mr Samuel Addo, Disease Control Officer of Sunyani Municipal Hospital on Friday said the hospital had not recorded any poliomyelitis case for eight years. Mr Addo who is also in-charge of the Municipal Polio Immunisation exercise told Ghana News Agency (GNA) that "the great achievement" could be attributed to routine annual nation-wide polio exercise and the co-operation of parents during such programmes.

He said more than 25,000 children in the municipality had been targeted in the exercise and hoped to achieve 100 per cent and during the last exercise in February this year, the same number of children were targeted and about 99 per cent was achieved. Mr Addo said the programme formed part of the planned polio exercise initiated by Ghana Health Service (GHS) last year in response to an outbreak of eight polio cases recorded in the Northern Region. He said the normal polio routine exercise would take place in October this year, adding that 198 trained volunteers were in field to immunise children at strategic areas such as schools, lorry stations and markets whilst others moved from house to house.

Mr Addo said much publicity about the exercise had been made by the Information Service Department, local radio stations and appealed to parents and guardians who had not yet immunised their children to send them to the nearest health centre for the exercise. He advised parents to take the exercise serious and ensure that their children were not left out to protect them from all strange diseases and departmental heads to release vehicles for the success of the programme.