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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India closes borders against poliovirus -Sanchita Sharma

India closes borders against poliovirus -Sanchita Sharma

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published Published on Oct 25, 2013   modified Modified on Oct 25, 2013
-The Hindustan Times


Now that India's "polio-free" status is less than three months away -- the nation's last polio case of a two-year-old girl in the Panchla block of Howrah, West Bengal, was reported on January 13, 2011 -- the Centre is going the extra mile to stop re-infection.

This year, 296 polio cases were reported till October 16. In 2012, there were 171 in the same period and 223 till December 31 from five countries -- Afghanistan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

This year, polio cases in four countries -- Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan -- that were polio-free in 2012 are double of those in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the poliovirus still thrives in the wild. And with conflict-hit Syria almost certain to join the group this week, re-infection is a worrying reality for India.

India's intensive vaccination drive brought polio cases down to one in 2011, from 741 in 2009, when India topped the world's polio charts, reporting almost half (46%) of the global total of 1,604 cases.

"Children under 5 years crossing the international border into India are being vaccinated against polio at five points along the Indo-Pak border, 84 points along Indo-Nepal border and three points along India-Bangladesh border." said Dr Pradeep Haldar, deputy commissioner immunisation, ministry of health and family welfare.

India's Polio Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans teams have identified nearly 400,000 (4 lakh) high risk settlements -- which include peri-urban migrant settlement, nomadic communities, construction sites etc -- to ensure no child under 5 misses vaccination.

"The job is almost done, but the risks are huge in view of the uncontrolled transmission in Pakistan, Nigeria, the outbreaks in the Horn of Africa, and now Syria. The virus may come back into India through the same route it went out to countries as far as Angola, Tajikistan, Bangladesh and Nepal," says Deepak Kapur, chair of the India National PolioPlus Committee, referring to India in the past re-infecting people in other countries.

Polio is vaccine-preventable viral infection that cripples, paralyses and kills children, often within hours. The virus lives in an infected person's throat and intestines and spreads through contact with contaminated faeces and saliva. Children who survive are often disabled permanently.

People living in countries and regions in conflict - Syria, Somalia, in Syria may be creating conditions ripe for a disease outbreak. Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), to name a few - are at most risk because children there cannot be reached by vaccinators, 20 of whom were shot dead in 2012 in spate incidents in Pakistan and Nigeria.

In Pakistan, the majority of cases are from North Waziristan in FATA, which now has the largest number of children being paralysed by polio in Asia.

"Keeping the community engaged for the repeated polio immunization rounds as well as ensuring routine immunisation is both challenging and as well as critical in the zero-polio India and until global eradication," says Dr Anis Siddique, Programme Special Polio, UNICEF India.

Failure to eradicate polio could lead to at least 2 lakh children paralysed or dead worldwide every year.

Polio

Since the launch of the UN-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, polio cases have dropped by 99%-from 3.5 lakh children paralysed or killed annually in 125 countries in 1988 to 223 cases in five countries in 2012.

India's last reported case was on January 13, 2011.

Polio


The Hindustan Times, 24 October, 2013, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-closes-borders-against-poliovirus/article1-1139635.aspx


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