World Polio Day

Worldwide, there is no correlation between a child's gender and immunisation, i.e., there is no gender difference. One important exception is India where females are associated with missed polio vaccination (via).



"(...) there are notable variations where immunization coverage is higher for girls in some countries and higher for boys in others. This is why the polio programme regularly collects sex-disaggregated data to enable it to track gender-related discrepancies and take swift corrective action. Overall it is important to note that data from the polio-endemic countries (Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan) in the past two years shows that girls and boys have been equally reached in house-to-house vaccination campaigns. For instance, in Afghanistan, out of all girls surveyed after vaccination campaigns in 2017, 92.6% were recorded as vaccinated, compared to 92.5% of boys. This high level of coverage is the tangible result of targeted and context-specific communications for awareness raising and behaviour change activities, combined with well-trained health workers recruited from local communities." Global Polio Eradication Initiative

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photograph via