Polio alert in the South

The presence of wild polio virus has been confirmed in a stool sample collected by MEDAIR’s mobile and response team (MRT) operating in Ruweng county, Western Upper Nile/Unity (Wahdah) state, southern Sudan, the WHO told IRIN on Tuesday. Initial analysis in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, followed by more detailed analysis at a virology laboratory in South Africa isolated a wild polio virus (P1) from the stool sample on Friday last, 20 July, WHO official Jeff Partridge told IRIN.

The WHO was “very concerned” about the finding for a number of reasons, he said. In the first case, MEDAIR was on the ground in Ruweng for just a couple of days and there could be many more cases of paralysis there, since the virus is extremely contagious. Perhaps more importantly, paralysis occurs in approximately one in every 200 people infected so one could presume that there are many more infected carriers, he added. Knowing the insecurity in Ruweng, and that people could be forced by violence to move into other parts of Western Upper Nile/Unity, into Lakes District or Twic country, there was a real need was for urgent rounds of polio immunisation to halt the spread of the disease, Partridge said. [for more details, see IRIN separate of 24 July headlined “SUDAN: Polio outbreak confirmed in Western Upper Nile”]