Saturday, November 23, 2013
Two UN agencies on Friday called on countries in the
Horn of Africa region to remain watchful as successive polio outbreak
has significantly slowed down.
The UN World Health Organization and UNICEF also appealed for 88
million U.S. dollars to support governments' polio eradication efforts
in 2014 and maintain the momentum built over the last six months.
WHO Polio Operations and Research Hamid Jafari said the two UN
agencies have supported countries in their response, working closely
with health authorities as well as civil society groups to ensure
children everywhere can be vaccinated.
"The priority is to stop the residual transmission in South Central
Somalia and in the Somali region of Ethiopia, reduce vulnerability by
boosting immunity of populations and increasing immunization coverage,
especially in hard-to-reach and inaccessible parts of the region,"
Jafari said.
The agencies said about 1 million children in the Horn of Africa,
most of them in Somalia, have never been immunized or have not received
the required number of doses.
The agencies blamed low immunization coverage as a key factor behind
the outbreak, which was also fuelled by frequent population movement and
areas of insecurity.
He said the polio affected countries are now moving into a new phase of polio outbreak response.
The WHO had expressed fears that new cases of the wild polio virus
continued to emerge in the Horn of Africa during the reporting period
despite ongoing efforts to end the outbreak.
The UN health agency had warned that the outbreak is likely to be
"explosive, large of long duration" and spreading more quickly,
necessitating "continued urgent and coordination joint action."
The Horn of Africa region has been polio free in recent years but due
to low immunization coverage, the region has remained vulnerable to the
importations of the wild polio virus.
The outbreak had affected some 200 children and adults in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.
"Today, the progression of the outbreak has significantly eased off,
thanks to the rapid response by the region's governments and their
partners. The risk of the virus continuing to spread, however, remains
high," the agencies said.
According to the agencies, several rounds of immunization campaigns
in Somalia which has most cases, there has been a substantial decline
with no cases reported since July from Banadir region - the epicenter of
the outbreak.
The agencies said similar efforts in Kenya have also borne results,
and no new cases have been reported for the past three months. In
Ethiopia, the outbreak has been confined to the Somali region alone.
In May, a case of wild polio virus was confirmed in the Benadir
region of Somalia. A week later another case was reported in the Dadaab
refugee camp in Kenya.
Six new cases were reported in the past week (4 in Somalia and 2 in
Ethiopia), bringing the total number of cases in the Horn of Africa to
197 (174 in Somalia; 14 in Kenya; 6 in Ethiopia and 3 in South Sudan).
UNICEF Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Steven Allen
said children in this region and elsewhere will not be safe from polio
until we reach every unimmunized child.
"While we are pleased with the results achieved thus far, we must
remain vigilant as there is still a risk that the virus could spread
further, not only within the affected countries, but also cross borders
into neighboring countries," Allen said.
Polio is a highly infectious and potentially fatal disease caused by a
virus that is spread by faecal-oral transmission from person to person.
Most people infected with the polio virus have no signs of illness and are never aware they have been infected.
Approximately one in 200 infections leads to irreversible acute
flaccid paralysis, caused when the virus invades the central nervous
system.