Wild polio virus spreads to Sumatra

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The wild polio virus that has crippled 65 children across Java looks to have spread to Sumatra, with the government confirming one new positive case in a three-year-old girl in Lampung.

"We found that one child under the age of five in Lampung has been infected by the virus and we will conduct an outbreak immunization response as soon as possible," Ministry of Health director-general for disease control and environmental health I Nyoman Kandun said on Saturday.

The response aims to isolate the virus and prevent it from spreading. It is usually conducted in an area where the virus is discovered and neighboring areas where the mobility rate of people is high.

The new positive case was the second outside West Java, where the first case was found in April.

Less than a week before the second round of polio vaccination campaigns in Banten, Jakarta and West Java on June 28, the health ministry found the first positive case in Demak, Central Java.

"Last week, we carried out an ORI in Demak and Grobogan to protect some 78,000 children under the age of five," Kandun said. As long as there were pockets of unvaccinated children, there was a possibility that the virus would spread further, he said.

The Ministry of Health, supported by the WHO, has just completed two rounds of mass polio vaccinations in Banten, Jakarta and West Java provinces to protect 6.5 million children from the imported virus, which Indonesia has not seen since 1995. The current outbreak began in Sukabumi in West Java.

The new cases have prompted the health ministry to schedule another round of polio immunizations for children in Central Java, Yogyakarta, Lampung and South Sumatra.

"If possible, we will cover a total of 10 provinces," Kandun said.

The immunization, scheduled to take place either in August or September, is expected to cover at least 12 million children under the age of five.

Ideally, Kandun said, vaccinations should be conducted simultaneously nationwide but this was more than the government could afford.

The government spent Rp 100 billion on a national immunization campaign in 1995.

Kandun said Indonesia would need support from other countries and international organizations to carry out a larger vaccination program.

"Health problems are a global concern, including this one," he said. "If a country helps Indonesia overcome this outbreak, it is in fact protecting itself from possible contractions."

Indonesia is the latest country where polio has resurfaced. In 2004 the WHO recorded 119 similar cases of polio in 15 previously polio-free countries. Polio has not yet been eradicated from Nigeria, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan and the Sudan.

Poliomyelitis, widely known as polio, is a waterborne viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis and sometimes death.(003)