Polio outbreak confirmed in Western Upper Nile

The presence of wild polio virus has been confirmed in a stool sample collected by a MEDAIR team operating in Ruweng County, Western Upper Nile/Unity (Wahdah) state, southern Sudan, the World Health Organisation told IRIN on Tuesday. The WHO was “very concerned” about the finding for a number of reasons, said the head of the WHO’s polio eradication programme for Sudan, Jeff Partridge. 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 was extremely contagious. Perhaps more importantly, paralysis occured in approximately one in every 200 people infected so one could presume that there were many more infected carriers, he added. With the confirmed case of wild polio having caused the paralysis of a child three months ago, the danger was that thousands of other people had been infected since; this was especially so since Ruweng had been reached by only two rounds of National Immunisation Days (NIDs) last year and one in 1999, and it had not been accessed at all in this year’s because of insecurity, Partridge said. “We look at this as an outbreak because it’s proof that the virus is there, that polio is circulating in South Sudan,” he added. The MEDAIR mobile and response team had been operating in Ruweng county when it identified a case of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) and, suspecting polio, contacted WHO at the OLS southern sector operations base in Lokichoggio, northern Kenya, the NGO stated in a press release on Saturday. Initial analysis in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, followed by more detailed analysis at a virology laboratory in South Africa had isolated a wild polio virus (P1) from the stool sample on Friday last, 20 July, Partridge told IRIN. WHO officials were currently contacting staff and field assistants in Lokichoggio and in districts neighbouring Ruweng, as well as other UN agencies, MEDAIR and the Sudan Rehabiliation and Association [since Ruweng is in an area controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), whose humanitarian wing is the SRRA] in order to decide on the approach to take, and to gauge what is feasible in a situation of limited access, Partridge said. Knowing the insecurity in the Ruweng area, 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, he added. Ruweng County continues to be one of the neediest areas covered by the southern sector of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), according to MEDAIR’s statement on Saturday. With the area plagued by insecurity, it was not possible to maintain a permanent presence on the ground and MEDAIR’s mobile and response team was the only health programme within OLS that maintained a capacity to respond in this difficult area, the agency said.