Polio immunisation planned for South Sudan

December 12, 2008 (JUBA) – Health care workers will continue to target polio in South Sudan after efforts in October and November that aimed to reach 2.8 million children.

The efforts were hindered by heavy rains so that less children were reached than planned, said Afework Assefa, head of the south’s World Health Organisation polio programme in an interview with Reuters.

The waterbourne and foodbourne disease was also targeted last year in Sudan when about 8 million children were vaccinated. The disease is most dangerous for children and causes paralysis.

Officials in Juba told Reuters that an outbreak this year has infected 15 people. The figure is alarming because South Sudan is supposed to be free from polio.

Beginning in 1988, the World Health Organization launched a campaign that virtually eliminated the disease from hundreds of thousands of people and many countries, but it persists in Sudan.

“Even one case is an emergency. It spreads very fast to other children,” said Anthony Laku Steven, the Health Ministry’s Director of Community-based Healthcare.

New scientific tests showed that cases in Unity State were spread from Ethiopia. Polio cases have previously been reported in the Ethiopian border region with Sudan.

More will be done next year to combat the desease before the rainy season, according to the World Health Organization.

(ST)