UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has announced an initiative to negotiate several special ceasefire agreements—called “Days of Tranquillity”—in the Democratic Republic of Congo so that some 10 million children under the age of 5 can be immunised against polio between July and September 1999.
In a first ever initiative, the heads of the World Health Organisation and Unicef, Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland and Ms Carol Bellamy, sent a joint appeal to Mr Annan, stressing the importance of this intervention as “the single highest priority for global polio eradication.” Both the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila, and rebel leaders controlling the eastern part of the country have given their preliminary assurances that weapons will be laid down while Congolese children are sought out and vaccinated.
A joint WHO-Unicef planning mission will go to Kinshasa in April to advise the Congolese Ministry of Health, which has primary responsibility for the areas under governmental control. The £9.4m ($15m) projected budget is expected to cover three rounds of immunisation to bring population immunity to the highest possible level. “To succeed in eradicating polio, we need access to children living in pockets of unrest and strife,” Dr Brundtland said. “The right to immunisation goes beyond conflict; all children have this right.”
The goal of eradicating polio worldwide by the year 2000 is one that the WHO set itself in 1988. Since then, the incidence of polio has declined by 90%around the world. National immunisation days have been conducted in over 120 countries. Formal truces for polio eradication have occurred in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Sudan, and El Salvador. Last year alone, over 450 million children were immunised. Now, with only about 5000 annual cases of polio occurring, complete eradication is within reach.