Ethiopia Launches Polio Vaccination Campaign

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Thursday it had discovered 18 new cases of polio in the country and has launched a nationwide vaccination campaign targeting 16 million children.

More than 100,000 volunteers and health workers will be fanning out across the Horn of Africa nation to vaccinate 16 million children under the age of five, the Ministry of Health said.

"Health experts confirmed 18 cases of wild polio virus have now been detected in Tigray, Amhara and Oromia regions," Tesfanesh Belay of the Ministry of Health told reporters.

Tesfanesh said the virus had originated in Nigeria and that surveillance had been launched along the borders to prevent further spreading.

Bruno Maes, the United Nation Children's Fund program officer in the country, said the polio virus detected in Ethiopia was foreign.

"It has a genetic code that identified it as a strain that had marched out of Nigeria, across the breadth of Africa through Sudan and over Ethiopia's porous borders", he said.

Ethiopia was on the verge of being declared officially polio-free at the end of last year, but the new cases dashed those hopes and sparked immunization drives.