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| Southeast Asia | |
| WHO: Indonesia Polio Shots Vital | |
| 2005-05-14 | |
| The U.N. health agency remains optimistic that Indonesia's first polio outbreak in a decade can be contained, but warned Monday that hundreds of people could be capable of spreading the disease without ever developing symptoms. Four toddlers have been confirmed as suffering from the crippling disease in two West Java villages. But based on past data, only about one in 200 people infected ever gets sick. That means that with four cases, as many as 800 people could unknowingly carry the virus and spread it to others in Indonesia, said Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health' Organization's polio eradication initiative in Geneva. "Without anyone taking notice, it transmits silently for a while," he said. "It can spread very rapidly without people knowing." More than 4,000 children in and around two villages where the polio cases emerged have been vaccinated since the first case was reported April 21, Rosenbauer said. Indonesia plans to inoculate 5.2 million children under age 5 by July.
It's unclear how the disease reached Indonesia, but experts say it likely came from a migrant worker, a religious pilgrim or a traveler returning from one of the three countries with a similar virus. "Obviously, we're all worried," said Arun Thapa, WHO's regional adviser for polio in Southeast Asia, who investigated the Indonesian outbreak. "We haven't yet been able to detect other evidence of the virus circulating in other districts. Thank God it's a localized outbreak so far." "We must remember that there is a lot of travel from Indonesia to the Middle East and gulf countries," he said. "There are guest workers from Indonesia who work in Malaysia and other countries. It is surely a concern for us." But Rosenbauer said WHO is optimistic the outbreak can be contained quickly. He said some 80 percent of children across Indonesia have been vaccinated and the rapid response to the latest cases will likely prevent the disease from spreading. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 phil_b wrote "The reality is that WHO's polio eradication capaign has been marked by general incompetance and coverups, which fed into muslim ignorance and superstition." Gift horse? Mouth? |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2005-05-14 10:29 |
| #1 Until relatively recently, WHO has been using attenuated (live) polio vaccine in Africa and I believe they still are (it's cheaper and easier to administer). A practice discontinued in the West 40 years ago after it was found to cause polio in some children. Here is a link that documents what happened in Uganda in the late 1990s. Something similar happened in Oman. Here is a report from 2000 that documents several vaccine derived polio outbreaks. The issue in Nigeria was that the vaccines may have been contaminated with a (female) hormone. The reality is that WHO's polio eradication capaign has been marked by general incompetance and coverups, which fed into muslim ignorance and superstition. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-14 03:58 |