Two fathers vaccinated their children against polio in Mozambique
“As fathers, we hoped our kids will keep healthy, go to school, learn well and get a good job.”
Inhassunge, QUELIMANE - Inhassunge is like a lost paradise. Only 30 minutes by boat from Quelimane, it is another world where the time stands still. The dirt road from the harbor to the main town depicts an impressionist painting where women are working in collecting the rice in the lush and green fields. Inhassunge is one out of the twenty districts of Zambézia province where the Polio Campaign has been running following a vaccination team, we arrived in the neighborhood of Sengene in the locality of Sengene in Mueupia. The only way to access is motorbike for the most adventurous or simply walking. People are living very simply spread in small villages surrounded by fields of rice.
Two men are sitting under a tree chatting, Emilio and Gentil Ernesto are brothers but also fathers. Both of them are fathers of two babies: Betty, a 1-year-old little girl, and Nita, a boy of 15-month-old. They live a simple life together with their families. The two babies spend their days playing and staying home with their dad in the morning when their mothers are in the field.
The brothers never heard about polio or neither heard about the vaccination campaign. Only when the vaccination team arrived at their home and proposed the vaccination that they realize something has been going on in the past days in Inhassunge.
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 World Health Organization (WHO) have joined 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 22 districts of Zambézia province 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. More than 1.5 million children have been vaccinated during the first round of the Polio vaccination campaign
Both of Emilio and Gentil children receive the oral polio vaccine. “We accepted immediately without asking a question,” they say. “Even though we don’t know about the disease, we know that the vaccines give health to our kids and it important to prevent diseases,” they added.
“As fathers, we hoped our kids will keep healthy, go to school, learn well and get a good job.”
As we finished our conversation with the two brothers, Emilio’s wife came back from the field, in time for lunch with the local products she collected. The brothers will for sure adhere to the second round of vaccination. This opportunity to vaccinate their kids at home also gives them flexibility and the opportunity to run their chores as usual.
Despite the rainy season, 35 vaccination teams in Inhassunge have been walking for five days to reach as many children as possible. It was definitely a challenge as most of the ways were flooded, still, 19,326 children have been vaccinated in Inhassunge. So far, more than 1.5 million children have been vaccinated during the first round of the Polio vaccination campaign in Zambézia.
