Dhaka, Bangladesh: Hundreds of thousands of volunteers and health workers fanned out across Bangladesh Saturday to vaccinate some 24 million children under the age of 5 against polio, following an outbreak of new cases earlier this year, an official statement said.

Parents with their children queued in about 120,000 immunization centers, many at bus and railway stations, airports, slums, schools, community centers and in remote villages, to eradicate the deadly disease that resurfaced after an absence of about five years, the Health and Family Planning Ministry said.

The ministry adviser, Sufia Rahman, inaugurated the new round of inoculations, while another was scheduled to begin on Dec. 23.

In April, the government started the campaign with the help of the Global Polio Eradication Campaign _ a partnership among UNICEF, Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the ministry said.

UNICEF and WHO helped Bangladesh conduct extensive polio vaccination programs in 1995-2004, and the country's last case was thought to have occurred in August 2000.

But the country's efforts to be declared polio-free were thwarted when a 9-year-old was recently paralyzed by the virus in eastern Chandpur. It was not clear how she was infected, but the same virus has also been found in parts of neighbouring India. Several other cases were found later, the ministry said.

The virus invades the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours. It also can be fatal in some cases.

About 1,880 people were sickened by polio worldwide last year, down from more than 350,000 before 1988, when WHO launched a global anti-polio campaign, the health agency said.