Health experts see major polio resurgence
Pastor Dale Morgan
Health experts see major polio resurgence*
12 Oct 2006 16:39:09 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA, Oct 12 (Reuters) - More than 250,000 people could contract polio
every year if Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan fail to eradicate
the crippling virus, public health experts said on Thursday.
Steve Cochi, chair of an advisory panel that oversees international
efforts to eliminate the disease, faulted the last four countries where
polio is endemic for failing to ensure children receive the cheap oral
vaccine that stops its spread.
"Polio continues in these few areas ... because authorities are
persistently failing to reach every child," Cochi, a senior adviser on
global immunisations at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), told a news briefing.
"The world will face upwards of a quarter of a million cases of polio
every single year if we do not finish the job now in these four
remaining polio-endemic countries. It will not remain at the levels of
disease burden that we are at today."
Largely as a result of two billion children being immunised in
house-to-house vaccination programmes, fewer than 2,000 people
contracted the disease last year, compared to 350,000 annually when the
eradication drive started in 1988.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF),
Rotary International and the Atlanta-based CDC missed their goal of
halting the spread of polio by the end of 2005.
While rates in Afghanistan and Pakistan have begun to wane, sporadic
efforts in India and an almost year-long interruption in vaccination in
northern Nigeria from mid-2003 caused a spike in infections that spread
to more than 20 countries.
Cochi said a failure to knock out polio in the countries that have never
stopped its transmission could cause "a huge resurgence" in the disease
which can cause life-long paralysis in children.
"The political leaders in the remaining few districts and states where
polio continues to circulate cannot be allowed to shirk their
responsibilities," he said.
In addition to increased immunisation in problem areas, health experts
said other countries might benefit from travel rules similar to those
introduced this year by Saudi Arabia.
Children under the age of 15 from polio-affected countries, and Muslim
pilgrims of all ages from Nigeria, must show proof of polio vaccination
to receive an entry visa, Yagob Yousef Al-Mazrou of Saudi Arabia's
health ministry said.
Those entrants also get a dose of the vaccine upon arrival.
David Heymann, the WHO's acting assistant director-general for
communicable diseases, said no new deadline would be set for the
eradication of the disease.
"We are at the end stages of the programme. There is no need to
retarget, what is necessary now is to finish," he said.