India Polio rates rising
Pastor Dale Morgan
India Polio rates rising *
By Peter Foster
(Filed: 18/09/2006)
Polio is making a comeback in India, needlessly crippling hundreds of
children and threatening global efforts to eradicate the disease, health
officials said yesterday.
Figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show a four-fold
increase in polio infections in India, with 283 cases already in 2006
compared with 66 in 2005.
India's failure to implement effective vaccination measures has been
blamed for the steep rise which is also undermining efforts to wipe out
the virus in Africa and other south Asian countries such as Bangladesh
and Nepal.
The outbreak is concentrated in Western districts of Uttar Pradesh —
India's most populous state with 175 million mostly poor people —where
an estimated 10 per cent of children were missed in the last vaccination
round. Of the 283 reported cases in India, 255 were in Uttar Pradesh
which had 29 cases in 2005.
"This is an example which shows that until polio is eliminated from
everywhere, everywhere is at risk," said Jay Wenger, the head of India's
National Polio Surveillance Project which works in conjunction with the WHO.
According to data released by UNICEF last week just five per cent of
children are fully immunised in the worst districts of Uttar Pradesh.
It will take six further vaccination rounds — all of which must be fully
implemented — to stop the virus from spreading and claw back the lost
ground, Mr Wenger added.
Peter Foster's South Asia blog