The Ministry of Health (MOH) represented by the Communicable Disease Surveillance of the Directorate General for Disease Surveillance & Control conducted today Wednesday a training workshop on Polio Outbreak Simulation Exercise (POSE) at the Radisson Blu hotel. The training activity is held with the support of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Eradication Program.

More than 50 participants representing the governmental, Non-MOH and Private Health Sectors and from all relevant specialties such as Communicable Disease, Epidemiology, Surveillance and Pediatric participated in the workshop.

The two-day workshop aim at updating the polio outbreak preparedness and response in Oman and informing the responsible government officials and Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partners with the most recent guidelines in this regard.

The workshop introduced the participants to the objectives of conducting the POSE. It further discussed the (GPEI) and current statue of the Initiative at the global, regional, and national levels. Moreover, the workshop highlighted the key strategies for rapid interruption of a polio outbreak and introduced the participants to POSE guidelines.

The second day of the workshop will discuss the major guidelines on needed actions in different polio outbreak periods and conclude with outcomes.

It should be noted that the Sultanate has not registered any Polio cases since 1993 and that the vaccines coverage rate, among them is the Polio vaccine reached above 99%.