THE Health Ministry has received 2.5 million doses of the monovalent oral polio vaccine type 2 from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to curb the spread of the disease in Sabah. 

Its director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the vaccines supplied by United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) will be given to one million children under the age of 13 in Sabah.

“Vaccine mOPV2 supplied by Unicef is additional medicine needed along with bOPV vaccine provided by the government to ensure complete protection from the polio virus.

“Both types of vaccines (mPOV and bPOV) will provide protection to children and prevent the spread of polio virus to other children. All children below the age of 13 will be given both types of OPV vaccines regardless of their immunisation status,” he said in a statement on the ministry’s official website.

Noor Hisham said the OPV vaccine is safe and should be given several times for optimum effect, so parents and guardians, kindergartens and schools are urged to ensure that the children took it.

Recently, Malaysia recorded three polio cases involving a three-month-old baby from Tuaran, an eight-year-old child from Sandakan and 11-year-old from Kinabatangan in Sabah. 

A three-year-old healthy child with no symptoms from Semporna was found to be positive for polio virus through the targeted healthy children sampling while five samples of sewage water in Kota Kinabalu and Semporna also tested positive.

As a control measure, the government has issued additional allocation to carry out bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine immunisation campaign for children across Sabah since December 27, 2019. – Bernama, February 28, 2020.