Rubella and de-worming campaign going smooth

Onalenna Kelebeile | Wednesday August 10, 2016 15:27

The Government Hospital’s public relations officer, Onalethata Nkwe has said so far the campaign has been going well with good turn out looking at the population within their catchment area.

“We appreciate parents and guardians who were cooperative during the campaign which ends on Friday. They brought their children for vaccinations without any hassle. We have never had any cases of refusal of treatment from any of the parents,” she said.

She explained that the campaign aims at vaccinating children aged from nine months to 14 years. Nkwe said the under five years were attended to at the local health facilities while with others health officials had to wait for schools to re-open.

Nkwe however, said the challenge they encountered when schools re-opened was that children were sent home early because there was no cooked food for them at the schools.

“We had targeted to vaccinate 400 children a day per school but we experienced shortage of manpower. We also realised that we did not have enough vaccination cards that meant that children had to go home without vaccination records. The good thing however is that they have school cards that remain at their respective schools,” she explained.

She added that they intend to wrap up the campaign on Friday but they fear they may be forced to prolong the campaign due to shortage of health workers.

Nkwe noted that they want to do the best they can to reach their daily targets so that they can create time to do a mop up campaign.

“Through the mop up campaign we will be visiting pre-schools to confirm if any child missed the vaccination,” she said.