TEMPO.CO, Jakarta -Malawi declares plague polio after discovering the case of a young child in the capital city of Lilongwe. This is the first case of poliovirus on the African continent in five years.
As reported Aljazeera On Friday 18 February 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the strain found in children in Lilongwe was similar to a case circulating in Pakistan.
WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said WHO would take immediate action to prevent the potential spread of wild polio in Malawi.
“As long as polio exists everywhere in the world, all countries remain at risk of importing the virus. Following the detection of polio in Malawi, we took immediate action to prevent its potential spread,” Moeti said.
WHO will provide assistance to health authorities in Malawi and increase additional polio immunization. WHO is also helping to conduct outbreak risk and response assessments and deploying the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) rapid response team.
Africa was declared polio-free in August 2020. The WHO said the discovery of the new cases did not affect the status of Africa which had been free of wild polio outbreaks.
“The last case of wild poliovirus in Africa was identified in northern Nigeria in 2016 and globally there will be only five cases in 2021. Each case of poliovirus is an important event and we will mobilize all resources to support the country’s response,” said the Polio Coordinator at the Regional Office. WHO for Africa, Modjirom Ndoutabe.
Polio is a highly contagious disease. The virus is usually spread through contaminated water or food. The polio virus attacks the nervous system and can cause complete paralysis within a few hours.
So far there is no cure for polio. However, the polio vaccine, which was developed in the 1950s, has prevented the spread of and eradicated the virus in most countries of the world.
Polio remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to GPEI data, since 1988, worldwide polio virus cases have fallen by 99. percent, from around 350,000 to just five cases in Afghanistan and Pakistan last year.
Also read: WHO and UNICEF Re-start Polio Vaccination in Afghanistan Assisted by Taliban
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
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