A mother becomes a health worker to help stop the spread of polio in Mozambique
"I walked with my baby with an umbrella to protect us from the sun. I don t feel tired, I am motivated to prevent the disease to come to my people.”
Ile, Zambezia - It is a hot day in Ile. This is also the fourth day of the round one of the polio vaccination campaign. The teams are giving their best to reach the population which is spread in thousands of small villages.
While on the national road that leads to the health center of Massira, we found the vaccination team number three (3). Ciosa António and her two colleagues are walking under the sun to reach the nearest health center to refill their vaccine box.
23 years old Ciosa is the vaccinator of the team. She is not alone though, there is another unexpected team member attached on her back in a red Capulana, a baby girl of 6 months old who has been accompanying her to walk down the numerous dirt roads of the countryside of Ile, looking for children younger than 5-year-old to vaccinate. She and her baby girl walked from 8 am to 5 pm every day offering a door-to-door vaccination against polio.
Polio is a very dangerous disease and Mozambique was free of the disease since 2016, but three new cases have been identified in the district of Molumbo during an epidemiological vigilance exercise. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) together with the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) have joined the effort to block the propagation of this disease with setting up a door-to-door vaccination campaign to vaccinate all children from 0 to 59 months in all the 22 districts of Zambézia and some neighbor districts of Niassa and Nampula provinces. This campaign which is part of the global polio eradication has been designed so that the community leaders have a fundamental role to sensitize the parents to adhere to the campaign.
Ciosa got involved as she is keen on fighting and preventing the disease. Ciosa is part of the 39 APE's (community health workers) of Zambézia and is therefore already involved in ensuring her people are receiving the health information and care they need. “I walked very well with my baby, I have an umbrella to protect us from the sun. I don t feel tired, I am motivated to prevent the disease to come to my people,” she said
That day the team of Ciosa has vaccinated a total of 140 children contributing to the success of the district of Ile to reach its vaccination target: a total of 55,395 children have been vaccinated in Ile. Ciosa will for sure sign in for the Round 2 which is to happen at the end of April 2019. So far, more than 1.5 million children have been vaccinated during the first round of the Polio vaccination campaign in Zambezia.
