ANGOLA: Polio epidemic breaks out among the displaced

The largest polio epidemic to hit Africa since 1995 has broken out in Angola among the country's displaced, according to WHO. As of Monday, 302 cases had been reported with 19 deaths. Most of them have occurred in districts on the outskirts of Luanda, home to the bulk of the displaced that had fled to the capital to escape Angola's civil war in the hinterland. "So far it is the second largest epidemic in Africa since the Congo in 1995 when there were 1,000 cases," Dr Okwo Belle, the regional director of WHO's Harare-based Expanded Programme of Immunisation told IRIN on Wednesday. An emergency "massive immunisation campaign" has been scheduled for Luanda and Caxito in Bengo province this weekend, a WHO report said. The government is to mount an anti-polio awareness drive and is preparing a water chlorination programme. Teams of epidemiologists are also due to leave for the towns of Benguela and Lubango to investigate reports of "Acute Flaccid Paralysis" caused by the polio virus. Polio is a respiratory virus which thrives in the conditions faced by Angola's displaced. It is spread in childhood and attacks the nervous system causing paralysis. The deterioration in the security situation in Angola since the end of March has increased the number of newly displaced people (IDPs) to 780,000, bringing the total number of IDPs in the country to 1.5 million.