KATHMANDU, July 24: Mandatory polio vaccination campaign for children under five years old is commencing in the Kathmandu Valley from today. The campaign, which will run until July 27, aims to administer polio vaccines to children under five across all three districts of the valley. The campaign has started to administer polio drops to children below five years old from today as a highly contagious poliovirus was detected in sewage in the city.

The health workers will visit every doorstep for this campaign and children who had received vaccines regularly in the past will also be inoculated, the KMC said. 

The government has mobilized 12,000 to 16,000 health workers for the polio vaccination campaign that will continue for four days.

Since they are at high risk, 280,000 children under the age of five have been prepared to be vaccinated against polio.

Oral polio vaccines are inoculated thrice in the sixth, tenth and fourteenth weeks and the children are vaccinated in their nine months.

Dr Abhiyan Gautam, chief of the Vaccination Division at the Family Welfare Division, stated that preparations are being made to administer oral polio vaccines due to the detection of a mutated form of the polio virus found in the capital.

The vaccination division has announced that preparations are being made to administer vaccines directly at nearby Montessori schools for children without homes. Dr Gautam has appealed to report any children who missed the vaccination from these two locations.

The KMC has estimated some 63,000 children under five years need polio vaccines and the highest number of the children is in ward no. 6, while the lowest number is assumed to be in ward no. 1. 

The KMC said that polio has not been detected in people in the country since 2010 but the campaign now is initiated as the virus was detected in sewage.

The polio virus was detected in the water at the confluence of the Tukucha and Bagmati rivers. A sample collected from the confluence tested positive for the polio virus. Nepal last witnessed this virus in humans in 2010, and the country was declared polio-free in 2014. The government had aimed to eradicate polio by 2026.

The sample collected on May 26 was sent to a Bangkok-based laboratory for testing, which resulted positive. The result came on July 13. It was also shared during a program that the new variant of the virus is 'vaccine-derived polio type-3,' not 'wild polio.'

The polio vaccine is provided by UNICEF, while the World Health Organization will allocate 25 million rupees for the vaccination campaign.