Islamabad: A seven-month-old girl was confirmed to be paralysed by wild polio, making it the seventh polio case this year.
“This is the seventh wild polio case in Pakistan this year and the sixth in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. The child had an onset of paralysis on May 2,” Pakistan’s health authorities confirmed. The child has been paralySed in both lower limbs and left arm, preliminary investigations suggested.
All children confirmed with wild poliovirus this year belong to the North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “The outbreak in North Waziristan appears to be following the same pattern as that witnessed in 2014 and 2019 when there was a surge in cases in the same area,” said Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel. Health officials “are working tirelessly to ensure that we break this pattern,” he said.
The health minister requested parents and caregivers around Pakistan to “remain extremely vigilant and give their children repeated doses of the polio vaccine.”
The regions at highest risk of wild poliovirus are the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, namely North and South Waziristan, DI Khan, Bannu, Tank and Lakki Marwat. “We are administering the polio vaccine to children up to the age of 10 at all entry and exit points from southern KP to stop the spread of the virus,” said Dr Shahzad Baig, coordinator at national emergency operations centre, Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI).
The sudden surge in wild poliovirus (WPV) cases in North Waziristan is because of “high refusal rates and instances of finger-marking without vaccination during campaigns,” health officials said.
Resurgence of wild poliovirus cases
On April 22, Pakistan reported its first polio case in nearly 15 months with a toddler paralyzed by the crippling disease in North Waziristan - the mountainous region in northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. The resurgence of cases is described as a slight setback for Pakistan’s polio programme which made substantial gains in 2021 with only one wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) case compared to 84 cases in 2020. The total number of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) cases remained at eight in 2021.
With this new case, the global count for wild poliovirus in 2022 has reached eight from the endemic countries, with one case reported from Afghanistan in January.
Polio is a highly infectious and incurable disease caused by poliovirus mainly affecting children under the age of five. It attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis or even death. Vaccination is the most effective way to protect children as the virus has no cure.
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