More than 100,000 children in Sabah, from newborns to five years old, have been vaccinated in the first month of the Health Ministry's campaign to contain an outbreak of polio detected there last December.

Health Department director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement today the figure represented 27.93 percent or 109,232 children from its estimated total of 391,040 children between that age living in 25 districts.

He said all children in Sabah identified under the ministry's Supplementary Immunisation Activity (SIA) - launched last Dec 27 - would be given the first dose of an oral polio vaccine.

"The SIA is the second phase of activities to control and prevent a polio outbreak in Sabah.

"Implementation of SIA in several districts were very challenging in terms of logistics and safety of medical staff involved.

"For example, they had to take boats and walk several kilometres to reach the identified villages," Noor Hisham said.

The SIA was launched after it was reported last Dec 8 that a three-month-old baby from Tuaran, Sabah, was infected by the polio virus. This was the first case after 27 years of Malaysia being free of the disease.

The case is linked to a polio outbreak in the southern Philippines, the World Health Organisation and Unicef later confirmed.