Polio comes back to haunt Africa - 2000 AFP cases so far this year

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http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-12-08-polio-comes-back-to-haunt-africa

Polio comes back to haunt Africa
LOUISE REDVERS - Dec 08 2010 09:38

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Bad immunisation strategy has been blamed for an outbreak of polio, which has killed nearly 200 and is believed to have caused paralysis in more than 2 000 others across Angola, Congo and the *Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A mass vaccination campaign has now been launched to cover the population of Congo, 16 districts of the DRC and the Angolan *province of Cabinda.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has, meanwhile, placed neighbouring countries on high alert in case the virus spreads across more borders.

Polio, a highly infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible *paralysis in a matter of hours, has not been seen in Congo for a decade.

As a result, health services there have struggled to cope with the scale of the outbreak, which began in Pointe Noire in October and has been described as a "national catastrophe".

As of November 22, there were 409 reports of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), the symptomatic presentation of polio, and 169 deaths in Congo alone.

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Across the border in the DRC there have been 1 593 reports of AFP, 49 confirmed polio cases and several deaths.

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The polio detected in the DRC and Congo is a strong genetic match to the strain of the polio virus first detected in Angola in 2006 after it was imported from northern India.

That was Angola's first case of polio for three years, but the disease spread quickly and this year there have been more than 300 AFP cases, 29 confirmed reports of polio and at least four deaths.

According to local media reports, a number of people showing the symptoms of AFP have been dumped at local hospitals because their relatives are worried about contracting the disease themselves.

Polio is passed by person-to-person contact, with most people able to be carriers without any signs of infection, spreading the virus "silently" to thousands before paralysis sets in.

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Re: Polio comes back to haunt Africa - 2000 AFP cases so far this year

http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Poliothisweek.aspx

Polio this week - As of Thursday December 2, 2010
Eleven new cases are reported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), making this the largest outbreak reported in DR Congo in the last ten years.
Three new cases are also officially reported from neighbouring Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville), following laborat ory confirmation of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1). Over 400 "suspected polio cases" in total have been recorded in the outbreak area of Pointe Noire with laboratory results still pending on several cases where stool samples were collected.
The situation in central Africa, with the outbreaks' origin in neighbouring Angola, continues to be the highest risk to Africa's polio eradication effort. This is particularly true given the progress achieved over the past 12 months in Nigeria, west Africa and the Horn of Africa.

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Congo
Three new cases were reported in the past week, bringing the total number of cases for 2010 to six. 476 cases of AFP have been reported (and are still being processed in the laboratory), with at least 179 deaths.
The vast majority of cases have occurred in the port city of Pointe Noire, and unusually, most cases are occurring in young adults, particularly in 15 to 25-year-old males.
Given the explosive, deadly nature of this outbreak and the high risk of further national and international spread, emergency outbreak response activities have also been carried out in high-risk districts of Angola and DR Congo.
From 12-16 November, Pointe Noire and Kouilou immunized all age groups (target: 1.1 million). The remainder of the country (target: approximately 3 million) conducted SNIDs with OPV from 18-22 November.
Two NIDs are planned from 3 December and from 26 December.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
Eleven new cases were reported in the past week, from Bandundu, Kasai Occidental and Katanga, bringing the total number of cases for 2010 to 60 (all WPV1s). The most recent case had onset of paralysis on 25 October (WPV1 from Kasai Occidental).
A mop-up has taken place from 12 November in 16 districts of Bas Congo in response to the outbreak in neighbouring Republic of Congo. A SNID was held from 23 November using a combination of bivalent OPV, monovalent OPV type 1 (mOPV1) and trivalent OPV throughout most of the country