HEALTH: One Last Push Needed to Wipe Out Polio Forever, Says WHO

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Apr 16 2002 (IPS) - Humanity is on the verge of eradicating poliomyelitis, but must step up efforts in a final phase to eliminate every last vestige of this disease, urges the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The greatest risks of polio infection are concentrated in zones of conflict and in three areas with highest poliovirus transmission: northern India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Nigeria and Niger.

The 10 countries where this disease continues to be endemic (in order of highest to lowest transmission risk) are India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Niger, Somalia, Egypt, Angola, Ethiopia and Sudan, according to the WHO.

Daniel Tarantola, director of the WHO Vaccines and Biologicals Department, predicts that 2002 will be a critical year for the polio-eradication effort.

The number of new poliomyelitis cases reported worldwide from Jan 1, 2001, to Apr 14, 2002, numbered just 537, the lowest in history, but the WHO has established the goal of interrupting all transmission of the disease by December of this year.

“Any delay will jeopardise the success of the entire effort,” Tarantola told a press conference Tuesday in Geneva, where this health agency of the United Nations is based.

The incidence of polio in the world has fallen more than 99.8 percent since 1988, when an international campaign to eradicate the disease was launched, and when polio had paralysed 350,000 children in 125 countries.

Poliomyelitis is an infectious disease caused by a virus that primarily affects children under age five.

According to the WHO, “one in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Amongst those paralysed, five percent to 10 percent die when their breathing muscles become immobilised.”

The assistant director of the European office of UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), Janet Nelson, stressed that there is no cure for polio, so prevention is paramount.

As such, the final phase of the campaigns for immunisation – the main form of prevention – is extremely important. Repeated vaccinations can protect a child for life, according to the WHO.

More than 575 million girls and boys under age five were immunised in 94 countries last year as part of the global effort to eradicate polio.

This international endeavour slashed the number of polio-endemic countries in half since 2000: from 20 to 10.

However, the health authorities engaged in the global campaign against polio warn that, in spite of the progress achieved, the eradication of the disease could become a victim of recent international events.

For example, Afghanistan’s polio surveillance system has suffered the consequences of the armed conflict there in the last several months, the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the installation of a provisional government.

Before the conflict escalated, National Immunisation Days were held in two phases, allowing health technicians to vaccinate 35 million children in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

However, “the re-establishment of an effective polio eradication programme in Afghanistan should be a global priority; all partners (in the effort) must ensure the job of eradicating polio from Afghanistan is completed and that regional and global progress are not threatened,” according to the experts of the Global Polio Eradication Technical Consultative Group, led by the WHO.

Also participating in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are UNICEF, the independent organisation Rotary International, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a U.S. government agency.

UNICEF official Nelson expressed the group’s appreciation for the cooperation provided by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – Doctors without Borders) and the Red Cross, two humanitarian non-governmental agencies.

Some of the greatest progress in fighting polio was recorded in Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where no new cases were recorded in the last year.

In the DR Congo, in spite of continued armed conflicts, more than 11 million children received the vaccine during National Immunisation days and the monitoring system has greatly improved, causing the number of confirmed cases to drop from 603 to zero in just one year.

The organisations spearheading the international campaign say that the “greatest threat to the eradication initiative is now the funding gap,” and are urging donor nations to provide a total of 257 million dollars.

They are confident that with these resources they will be able to meet their objective of completely halting transmission of the virus in 2002 and achieve certification of a poliomyelitis-free world by 2005.