The MOH Assistant Deputy Minister for Preventive Medicine Dr. Khalid Al-Zahrani said MOH has raised the budget allotted to the expanded vaccination program from 120m to over 400m Saudi Riyals. "The step reveals the attention paid to protecting children against a number of hereditary and contagious diseases discovered during the program work", he said.\
Speaking during a press conference held at the MOH premises and attended by the MOH official spokesman Dr. Khalid Marghalani, Dr. Al-Zahrani said MOH has started the execution of the campaign through implementing three major programs, the pre-marriage checkup program, early checkup of newborns, and the expanded vaccination program, which targets more than 16 diseases.
"MOH has revolutionized the expanded vaccination program during the year (2007/2008) by introducing vaccinations against a range of diseases including hepatitis A, poliomyelitis, measles, etc", he said. "We have raised the program budget to over 400m Riyals".
He said the program conclusive plan, which has started in all schools last week, aims at ensuring eradication of measles in the Kingdom. "MOH has executed the National Campaign for Preventing Measles, the largest among all vaccination campaigns, for ensuring eradication of the disease", he said.
According to Al-Zahrani, the vaccination coverage for the age group of less than 12 months has been relatively week, a matter which has necessitated launching of the conclusive plan in coordination with the Ministry of Education for covering measles, German measles, mumps, whooping cough, tetanus and poliomyelitis.
He said the National Campaign for Preventing Measles has assisted in reducing the rate of the disease from 5000 cases last year to 150 cases. "We have mobilized more than 10 thousand employees for targeting 400 thousand students in all parts of the Kingdom", he said. "We expect total eradication of the disease by the year 2010", he concluded.