A visiting Outbreak Response Assessment (OBRA) team has congratulated Malawi for successfully stopping further transmission of Polio in the country. The assessment team was debriefing the Ministry on Thursday through the Deputy Minister of Health, Hon Halima Daud, MP at it its headquarters in Lilongwe.

The Hon Deputy Minister could not hide government’s excitement at the news.

“Malawi values the independent assessment by the mission on our Polio eradication drive. A third eye on our efforts is therefore, very important for us to get a true picture on how we are performing on the ground in terms of implementation of polio eradication activities,” the Hon Deputy Minister observed.

According to the OBRA team, the current achievement can be attributed to:

• High level political commitment to the response
• Malawi’s implementation on most of the recommendations by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative including carrying out six successful rounds of vaccination campaigns across the country
• Multi-sectoral collaboration in the response at all levels

The OBRA team however cautioned Malawi not to relent in its efforts because the risk was still there as the disease could easily be imported from neighbouring countries which were still reporting cases.

In addition, the mission observed that throughout all the six rounds of the polio vaccination campaign, about 6% of the targeted children did not get any dose of the polio vaccine and therefore, still vulnerable.

Hon Daud thanked WHO, UNICEF, CDC and all the partners for facilitating this mission and also for their continued support in our efforts to once again eradicate Polio in Malawi.