By Kemo Cham
Sierra Leone’s Minister of Health, Dr Alpha Wurie, has confirmed three new polio cases in Sierra Leone for the first time in 10 years. He said the cases were recorded in Kambia, Tonkolili and Western Area Rural District.
The minister however said that the cases were not from the wild polio virus strain, rather vaccines derived.
Asked how they were able to piece that, Dr Wurie said the samples were tested abroad and proved traceable to vaccines.
The confirmation comes a day after the health ministry said it was investigating three suspected cases of the viral disease.
A ministry of health spokesman earlier told Politico that three cases of what appeared like Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) were been investigated.
AFP is a clinical syndrome that refers to a collection of signs and symptoms that experts say could be the result of one of many causes, including the polio virus infection.
Harold Thomas, Communications Lead in the Directorate of Health Security and Emergency (DHSE) in the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS), said a Rapid Response Team from the ministry was deployed on the ground in the three districts to conduct case investigations, while samples from the cases were sent to Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire for analysis and confirmation at the Institute Pasteur, one of two World Health Organization (WHO) certified laboratories in the sub-region with the capacity to confirm a test for Polio infection.
The WHO Africa region was declared free of wild polio virus on August 25, 2020. That meant that five of the six WHO regions – representing over 90% of the world’s population – were free of the wild poliovirus, moving the world closer to achieving global polio eradication. It also meant that up to date, only two countries worldwide continue to see wild poliovirus transmission: Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Nigeria was the last African country to have recorded a polio case in 2016.
Sierra Leone recorded its last case of polio in 2010.
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