Polio makes resurgence in Indonesia
Polio makes resurgence in Indonesia
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Indonesia has detected its first cases of polio in more than 10
years and health officials are urging the government to launch an
aggressive vaccination campaign to keep the disease from
spreading.
The Ministry of Health's polio surveillance team reported that
two 20-month-old toddlers in Sukabumi, West Java, had polio. The
team had received six reports of acute flaccid paralysis in
children in the area and followed up the reports by taking
specimens and running laboratory tests.
"The virus found in the area is not indigenous, it is
imported," World Health Organization medical officer Bardan Jung
Rana, who investigated the case, told The Jakarta Post on
Tuesday.
"It means that the infected children had contact with people
who acted as carriers after the virus had entered the country and
became widespread," he said.
Immediately after the findings were confirmed, the ministry
conducted a door-to-door vaccination campaign for children under
the age of five in the area, as well as in four surrounding
villages.
"We will proceed with immunization programs for children under
the age of five in West Java, Banten and Jakarta," Minister of
Health Siti Fadilah Supari said in a press release. The program
is expected to last until June and cover some five million
children.
Indonesia is the latest former polio-free country to see a
reemergence of the disease. In 2004, the WHO recorded 119 cases
of paralytic polio in 15 former polio-free countries.
The health organization said on its website that the virus had
spread from northern Nigeria, a country that was not declared
polio-free.
According to a foreign newswire, the polio strain then spread
to Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, but vaccination campaigns averted
major outbreaks in those countries.
The virus also spread to other African and Middle Eastern
countries -- Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Botswana, Burkina Faso,
Central African Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Togo and Yemen.
Indonesia was declared polio-free in 1995 although it
continued to carry out vaccination programs for children until
2002. The Ministry of Health also set up a polio surveillance
team to monitor cases of acute flaccid paralysis in children
under the age of 15, which are frequently caused by polio.
Poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio, is a highly infectious
viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total
paralysis and death.
The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in
the intestines. After initial infection, the virus is shed
intermittently in feces for several weeks. During that period,
the virus can spread rapidly through a community.
According to the WHO, one in 200 infections leads to
irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs. As of April 2005,
the organization reported 1,267 global cases of polio, 792 of
those in Nigeria. The virus can strike at any age, but statistics
shows that 50 percent of infected individuals are children under
the age of three.
Transmission of the virus by immune and partially immune
adults and children is possible, and is more likely to occur in
countries where sanitation systems are substandard.
"The world will hardly ever be free from polio," Bardan said.
"That's what makes immunization important." (003)