UGANDA: Surveillance teams to check polio spread in north -  There is a polio virus circulating in parts of Southern Sudan

April 1st, 2009

 

Photo: Jane Some/IRIN

A health worker adminsiters the polio vaccine in this file photo. Uganda has set up surveillance teams near the border with Sudan to check the spread of the disease in its nothern districts

KAMPALA,  - Uganda's health ministry has set up surveillance teams near the border with South Sudan to check the spread of polio in its northern districts, where seven cases have already been reported, officials said.

“There is a polio virus circulating in parts of Southern Sudan; some cases were reported in [the capital] Juba some time back, and, with poor sanitation along the route to Uganda, the virus has found its way into Uganda,” Sam Zaramba, the director-general of health services in Uganda, said.

He said surveillance teams were vaccinating all children younger than five who were entering Uganda from high-risk countries, such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Poor sanitation along the Kampala-Juba highway, Zaramba said, had contributed to polio being found in the northern district of Amuru, with the virus being linked to the cases detected earlier in Juba.

"In Africa, the area known for polio has been Nigeria and we suspect that the strain identified in this region has its origin there," Zaramba said. "Cross-border movement meant that this virus ended up in Amuru. These areas, including those in eastern DRC, can be breeding grounds for the virus and we are taking precautions."

Polio is a crippling disease but it takes a parent taking his or her child for two drops of the polio vaccine and this will spare the future of the country

Joaquim Sekewa, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Uganda, said polio was a disease without boundaries and communities interacting across frontiers required a synchronised campaign against the disease.

"Polio is a crippling disease but it takes a parent taking his or her child for two drops of the polio vaccine and this will spare the future of the country," Sekewa said. "We appeal to everybody to take their children below the age of five for vaccination."

He said specimens sent to a laboratory in South Africa showed that the polio type identified was the same as that found previously in South Sudan.

Polio is transmitted by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the virus. A child infected with the virus presents with acute fever followed by weakness in the limbs; in the worst case, irreversible paralysis occurs.

Zaramba said the health ministry had embarked on a campaign in 32 high-risk districts to ensure that all children received a booster dose of the polio vaccine.

"In our part of the world, where borders are porous, this is the only way to ensure that all children are given an opportunity to be immunised and hopefully interrupt transmission of this crippling disease," he said.

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source.www.irinnews.org