By IPS Correspondents
SANA'A, Jun 10 2005 (IPS)

New concern has arisen following a rise in the number of polio cases.

The number of reported cases rose from 108 to 179 by the end of last week. These are small numbers, but the increase is worrying in a country that had been declared polio-free in 1996.

The cases have been reported in 11 of the 21 governorates in this Arab country with a population of 21 million. The highest number of cases have been reported in the Red Sea resort Hodeidah. The city was hit by dengue fever in April, leading to several deaths.

The new cases are of Acute Flaccid Paralysis, a particularly severe form of polio, medical authorities say. Polio is an infection of the central nervous system that can cause paralysis in children, particularly of the legs.

The new infection is of a strain prevalent in Sudan and Nigeria, and is believed to have come with refugees from those regions. Prime Minister AbdulQader Bajammal has blamed illegal migrants entering the country without undergoing medical tests.

“All polio-affected countries should cooperate to eliminate the disease to save people of all countries,” public health and population minister Dr Mohammed al-Nomee told IPS.

Many Yemenis had resisted vaccination against polio in the early 1990s following rumours that the vaccine was a plot to spread infertility or AIDS. A vaccination campaign has spread since then, but health officials admit that only 60 percent of people have been covered so far.

About 35,000 volunteers have now joined a ministry effort to go house to house to convince people to vaccinate children. But many people have been saying that the government needs to tackle the spread of polio by tackling illegal immigration.

Mohammed Saeed al-Okashi whose three-year-old daughter has been paralysed by polio blames the government for failing to stop uncontrolled migration. “Why don’t we have a policy like Saudi Arabia, Oman,” he says. Those countries, like several others, test visitors for polio infection.

“Yemen is having a pretty big epidemic,” World Health Organisation (WHO) representative Oliver Rosenbauer told IPS. “But we should be able to stop the virus relatively quickly.”

WHO has provided six million doses of the newest anti-polio vaccine to Yemen. But given the low immunisation rate, WHO officials also fear a danger of the infection spreading out from Yemen. The disease remains endemic in several countries in the region including Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Nigeria and Afghanistan.

“An ongoing outbreak of polio can lead to infection also in other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East,” Mohammad al-Kohlani, head of epidemics surveys in the health ministry told IPS.

Several Yemenis have been critical of the ministry for not undertaking vaccination among refugees. The number of refugees in Yemen is believed to have crossed 700,000. Most of them fled hunger and conflict in Somalia and Ethiopia.

Yemeni authorities have found a high incidence of AIDS among these refugees, but there is no study of the incidence of other diseases amongst them.

Officials are fearing an economic fallout of the re-emergence of polio, both by way of the cost of immunisation and treatment, and a feared drop in the number of tourists..

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