Chad Launches Three-Day Polio Vaccination Campaign
Chad's President Idris Deby, alongside Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on Friday launched a three-day polio vaccination campaign at the Friendship China-Chad hospital "as part of efforts to rid the central African nation of the infectious disease," AlertNet reports. According to the WHO, "of the 401 declared cases of polio around the globe this year, 114 were in Chad, making it the world's worst-hit nation," the news service writes. Polio was presumed to be eradicated from Chad, which did not report any cases between June 2000 and July 2003, but the country has experienced a resurgence of the disease since 2003, AlertNet notes (Nako, 10/1).
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