Two cases of polio found in Ethiopia as disease spreads in Africa

ADDIS ABABA, Feb 26 (AFP) — Two cases of polio have been found in Ethiopia, making it the 14th country to be affected in the latest outbreak of the disease, health officials said Saturday.

The area of Ethiopia stricken with polio is near the border with Sudan, where the Ethiopian health ministry believes the virus came from.

“This is bad news for us, we have worked hard to eradicate polio, and we were waiting to be certified as a polio-free country,” said Dr Elmaz Gebre Senbet, coordinator of Ethiopia’s effort to wipeout polio.

“We suspect these cases come from Sudan, because for the last four years we have not had a single case of polio in Ethiopia,” Senbet said.

The recent outbreak of polio in Africa started in Nigeria when a group of Islamist clerics sparked a movement to refuse the vaccination, according to the World Health Organization, which has stepped up its vaccination campaign to fight the epidemic.

The disease has spread to countries bordering Nigeria and even as far as Saudi Arabia, where two cases surfaced recently. Like Ethiopia, health officials suspect the disease was transmitted through the Sudan.

Nigeria alone accounts for 60 percent of the world’s polio cases, with 788 young people paralyzed by the disease last year, compared with 355 in 2003, the WHO said.

The United Nations health agency’s vaccination campaign has targeted 22 African countries and aims to vaccinate 100 million children to eradicate the disease on the continent by the end of the year.

The poliomyelitis virus generally strikes children. It attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis and sometimes death due to respiratory problems.