A polio outbreak spreading from Nigeria to neighbouring countries is putting 15-million children at risk and undermining efforts to eradicate the disease worldwide, the United Nations health agency said on Wednesday.
”Polio continues to spread within Nigeria to areas which were polio-free and also to neighbouring countries,” said David Heymann, who leads the World Health Organisation’s fight against the crippling illness.
Nearly a dozen children have being paralysed in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, from the polio virus traced to northern Nigeria, said WHO.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which brings together WHO and other organisations, on Wednesday started a $10-million immunisation campaign in the four neighbouring countries plus Benin, aiming to reach every child with polio vaccine in just three days.
Further programmes are planned in Chad and Cameroon. After immunisation campaigns spearheaded by the initiative, the number of countries with the indigenous polio virus has been slashed to seven — Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Niger and Somalia. Some 99% of all new polio cases in the world are in Nigeria, Pakistan and India.
The Nigerian outbreak started in the northern Kano state in the summer. Experts blame insufficient coverage during mass polio campaigns and routine treatment, said WHO, noting that in some areas only 16% of children were immunised.
”Polio and other infectious diseases know no national boundaries,” said Heymann in a statement. ”We face a grave public health threat, and our goal of a polio-free world is in jeopardy.” WHO has set a 2005 target date to eradicate polio.
When WHO and other organisations launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, 125 countries were affected by the disease.
The disease, caused by the human poliovirus, has been eradicated in Europe, the Americas, much of Asia and Australia. It usually infects children under the age of five through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.
Until the latest Nigerian outbreak, India was the hardest-hit country.
However, Indian health authorities have stepped up vaccinations and say they are close to defeating the disease. A mass vaccination programme earlier this year immunised more than 230-million children in the six India states most affected by polio.
WHO statistics indicate the campaign has been successful so far — new polio cases in India up to October 14 were 145, compared with 1 556 cases diagnosed in 2002.
”Nigeria is now the country with the greatest number of polio cases in the world,” Heymann said. Nigeria reported 178 cases on October 14.
”The polio-infected states in Nigeria, centering around the state of Kano, have re-infected other areas of the country, most worryingly the city of Lagos with its 10 million inhabitants,” said WHO.
Bruce Aylward, who coordinates the Polio Eradication Initiative at WHO, said that the situation in Nigeria had become the last major challenge on the road to global eradication.
”Because of the tremendous progress made in 2002, the polio eradication tactics and resources were shifted in 2003 to focus on just those few remaining countries which remained endemic. But the situation in Nigeria is now forcing us to go back to countries which had already eliminated polio.”
”We simply cannot afford to see these isolated viruses again paralysing children in areas which had previously been polio-free,” Aylward added. – Sapa-AP