Massive polio campaign in Afghanistan

Tens of thousands of volunteers in Afghanistan have deployed around the country this weekend to vaccinate four and a half million children against polio.

The United Nations has secured a three-day ceasefire between the rival warring factions to allow the vaccinations to go ahead.

This is the second of four nationwide innoculation campaigns necessary to completely immunise all Afghan children. The first campaign was in May,and the final two will be in October and November. In the towns, the volunteers are using bicycles and in the mountainous areas, vaccines packed inside ice and snow are being transported by donkeys.

Afghanistan is one of thirty countries where polio still exists.

The UN wants to eradicate polio world wide by 2005. Polio -- which attacks the spinal cord and is either seriously debilitating or fatal -- can only be eradicated by the mass immunisation.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service