Freetown — Program manager of maternal child health in the ministry of health and sanitation has confirmed that Polio viruses are common in children under the age of five.

Dr. Thomas Samba, who was speaking during a press briefing on the just concluded polio vaccination campaign for 2009 in Freetown, said Sierra Leone has been Polio free since 2001 while other African countries are still grappling with an escalating polio epidemic.

"It is therefore of paramount importance that we step up our vigilance and our vaccination programs in order to maintain a polio free society. This will be a house-to-house vaccination so that at the end of the day every under-five child will be vaccinated," Dr. Samba said. He noted that they are working collaboratively with UNICEF and WHO in carrying out the campaign.

The aim of the health ministry, he said, was to reduce infant and under-five mortality rates, prevailing endemic diseases, malaria, acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, measles, neo-natal tetanus and yellow fever, which he described as the causer of death in the country.

"We aim to make Sierra Leone Polio free," he said. "Polio is an infectious disease caused by a virus that lives in the throat and intestinal tract. It is most often spread through person-to-person contact with the stool of an infected person and may also be spread through oral nasal secretion. It mainly affects children under five years of age and we give vaccination to them so that they cannot be affected by these diseases."

Manager of child and maternal health, UNICEF, Augustin Kabano said polio was a disorder caused by a viral infection.

"The virus, known as poliovirus, infects nerves. This infection can lead to temporary paralysis or, in more severe cases, permanent paralysis or death. More properly poliomyelitis was one of the most feared and studied diseases of the first half of the 20th Century," he explained.