After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/w...-decline-polio-cases-in-afghanistan-rise.html

After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year
By ROD NORDLAND
Published: January 17, 2012

In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan?s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely.

Appointed by the government, paid for by international agencies and given free passage by the Taliban in one of the last three countries in the world where polio is endemic, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative?s 65,000 volunteers and workers had seemed to have nearly wiped out the disease ? until recently...

 

[Shiloh]

Re: After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year

Source: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/01/polio-cases-in-afghanistan-triple-in-a-year.html


Nature News Blog
Polio cases in Afghanistan triple in a year

18 Jan 2012 | 18:09 GMT | Posted by Mark Peplow | Category: Health and medicine

Posted on behalf of Katherine Rowland

When Afghanistan instituted a door-to-door polio vaccination policy in 2000, the complete eradication of the disease seemed within reach. Between 1999 and 2004 the number of new cases fell from 63 to 4...

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year

Afghanistan: President Karzai calls on armed opposition to allow anti-polio vaccine to administer

17 January 2012 - 11:27am

Source: Government of Afghanistan

January 17, 2012 - President Hamid Karzai expresses his deepest concern over the polio cases still present in some insecure areas in Afghanistan and across the Durand Line.

Latest reports by the Ministry of Public Health demonstrate a three-fold rise in the number of polio cases in 2011 compared to that of 2010. The report that covered 2011 shows 80 cases in Afghanistan with 62 in the south of the country including in the province of Farah.

Deeply concerned by the increase in polio cases, the President stresses that those who stand in the way of vaccination are the true enemies of our children?s future.

President Karzai called on the armed opposition to allow the vaccination teams to help save children against the lifetime paralysis. ?Despite all the past efforts to vaccinate millions against polio, there are still children suffering from the disease on both sides of the Durand Line?, adds the President.

The President appeals to religious scholars, Mullahs and community leaders and elders to cooperate with the immunization teams by persuading the opposition to allow vaccinators to administer polio drops to children against the permanent paralysis.

http://reliefweb.int/node/470925