The World Health Organization will mount an aggressive vaccination campaign in five North African countries after two children were paralyzed by wild polio virus in Nigeria, the first such outbreak there in two years, officials said Friday.
Michel Zaffran, who directs the WHO's efforts to eradicate the disease, said a six-round campaign of vaccinations for children younger than 5 would begin shortly in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state and quickly expand to Chad, Cameroon, Niger and the Central African Republic in coming weeks.
The effort is "a major response to what we consider a major threat to the polio eradication initiative," Zaffran said in a telebriefing for reporters.
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