Jakarta – Three more children have contracted polio in Indonesia, bringing the total cases to 302 since the crippling disease resurfaced last year, the United Nations Children Fund ( UNICEF) has said. Indonesia will hold another nationwide immunisation drive targetting 24 million children under five on Monday in a bid to eliminate the virus, UNICEF said in a statement Saturday.

Another two rounds of polio immunisations will be held in February and April. "The polio virus is in retreat but not defeated," UNICEF's representative in Indonesia, Gianfranco Rotigliano, warned in the statement.

"If we can successfully vaccinate Indonesia's 24 million children under five just two more times, I'm confident by the middle of this year Indonesia will be again polio free," he said.

The government held three immunisation rounds last year and officials have said multiple immunisations increase a child's resistance to the virus. Polio resurfaced in March in Indonesia, a decade after it was believed to have been eradicated.

The waterborne polio virus attacks and withers children's limbs and can be deadly.