By Fasalie S. Kamara.
The immunization specialist in Sierra Leone for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF says the country has not reported a single case of polio since February 2010. Dr. Nuhu Maksha was however quick to add that that did not mean the country was polio-free.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Politico, the UNICEF Immunization Specialist said that the main responsibility of the agency was to ensure that vaccines were available and mothers were sensitised about the need to take the vaccines. He said that one case of polio was an outbreak.
“Other countries in the sub Sahara Africa such as Ivory coast, Nigeria and Kenya have all reported cases of polio” Dr Nuhu said, adding that polio could be transmitted easily. He said that it was only when Africa stopped reporting cases for a period of five years that “we can safely say Africa is provisionally free from polio”.
Dr Nuhu said that there were three stages of polio eradication – country, regional and global, and that a single case of the polio virus was a global threat.
The director of disease prevention and control in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Amara Jambia says the fight to eradicate polio has not yet been concluded because some other countries in the sub region are still reporting cases of polio. “That is why the fight is still on” the director adds.
Dr Jambai said that “if any child under 15 years reports fever or weakness of legs that child will be tested for polio” adding that the test result is sent abroad for a laboratory testing.
He said that Nigeria was the country in the sub-region that was now reporting the highest number of polio cases putting the figure at forty for this year alone. He compared that to Sierra Leone with two cases in seven years – in September 2009 and February 2010.
Dr Jambai said that “with cross movement, it means every country must be polio-free before we can safely say that polio is eradicated”. He mentioned Somalia, Afghanistan, and Kenya as countries that had reported polio cases in recent times.
UNICEF’s communications specialist, Angela Griep said that sometimes countries in Africa would meet the provisional eradication threshold of five years but would revert to being polio disease countries such as South Africa and Sierra Leone as examples. She said that before 2009 Sierra Leone had been declared as a provisional polio-free country but slid back in September 2009.
Griep said that Kambia and Bo districts were places that reported polio in 2009 and 2010 respectively. She however urged mothers to allow their children to take the polio vaccine which, she said, must be a continuous process until the world was declared polio-free. The next polio vaccination she said would take place next week - 25-28 October.
She applauded UNICEF in their awareness-raising campaign among mothers which she said had gone up to 85% as evaluated by WHO, an independent monitor of polio vaccination.
© Politico 17/10/13
