Supervision and monitoring of polio weakening: Review

Supervision and monitoring of polio weakening: Review

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The latest review on Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance,
a process that forms part of the effort to eradicate polio,
showed that supervision and monitoring of the disease in
Indonesia has weakened this year.

The current AFP case detection rates for non-polio AFP during
the first five months of this year were below one. The AFP
minimum rate is one case per every 100,000 children under 15
years old. A lower rate than the minimum means the possibility of
the polio virus being present in a country.

Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi said on Friday that the
evaluation would describe the effectiveness of AFP surveillance,
a process that is designed to make sure that no single case of
AFP -- whether caused by the polio virus or otherwise -- escapes
detection.

He said that the reasons behind the decline were, among other
things, the impact of the financial crisis, changes in the
government system and the replacement of medical officers.

"We ran out of money in January but we only received
additional funding after May. Such (financial) delays are
obviously an obstacle for us," Sujudi said.

In general, Indonesia has been moving to eradicate polio
through the National Immunization Week campaigns held in 1995,
1996, 1997 and 2002.

The country also has three of the 145 polio laboratories
worldwide. These are located in Jakarta, Surabaya and Bandung.
The three laboratories are capable of virus isolation and
serotyping. They have also been accredited by the World Health
Organization (WHO) since 1998, said the WHO's global coordinator
of the polio laboratory network, Esther de Gourville.

The Southeast Asian region countries, including India, plan to
have WHO polio-free certification by 2005. To reach this goal,
each country must be declared polio-free first, said the WHO
regional advisor on immunization and vaccine development (polio),
Arun Thapa.

"It is only three years after the last country in the region
is declared polio-free that certification for the region will be
obtained," he said, "But the process of certification for the
Southeast Asia region has actually started already."

Indonesia was declared polio-free in 1995. India is the only
country in the region where polio is still endemic.