by Vu Kim Chung
24-12-2000
Vice President Nguyen Thi Binh announced on December 15, 2000 that Viet Nam had eliminated polio at a ceremony held in Ha Noi. The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai; Shigere Omi and San Tae Han, Director and Honorary Director of the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organization, WHO; Director of the Western Pacific Region of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, Mehr Kha; and the ambassadors of several countries to Viet Nam. Viet Nam was officially recognized on October 29 to have eliminated polio, making the Western Pacific a polio-free region. The recognition means that Viet Nam has reached the WHO target for eliminating the disease throughout the globe by 2005, five years ahead of schedule.
The achievement was announced by the President of the National Committtee for Recognition of Polio Elimination, Prof. Dao Vong Duc; the Chairman of the National Expanded Immunization Programme, Prof. Dang Duc Trach; the Head of the Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Prof. Hoang Thuy Long; and the Director of the Sabin Vaccine Production Centre, Prof. Nguyen Van Man.
Viet Nam managed to implement the Expanded Immunization Programme nationwide since 1985 despite financial difficulties. The Government spent hundreds of billions of Vietnamese dong or tens of millions of US dollars in providing more than 60 million children with three doses of the polio vaccines in between 1985 and 2000, including those in remote mountain areas.
Although the success has ensured Vietnamese children would be free from polio in the coming century, the Government continues providing the vaccine to children in the six provinces bordering Cambodia and some localities along the common border with China and Laos so as to hold any possible infection from these countries at bay. The Public Health Ministry also devised a strategy to protect the achievement during 2001-2005, namely to maintain the rate of immunized children at more than 90 percent.
Southeast Asia and the Near and Middle East have yet to be recognized as polio free.
At the ceremony, Vice President Binh expressed thanks to foreign donors, especially Japan, Australia, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, as well as such international organizations as WHO and UNICEF, for their great help. She presented Prof. Hoang Thuy Nguyen, former Director of the Viet Nam Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology, with the title "Hero of Labour" and the Expanded Immunization Programme with the Labour Order, first class. WHO and UNICEF were awarded certificates of merit by the Public Health Ministry for their effective and timely help in the national fight against polio.