Syria polio outbreak hits global effort to eradicate virus
789 deaths in Yemen in past month: WHO
GENEVA, June 10, (Agencies): Three cases of polio have been confirmed in Syria’s Deir al-Zor governorate, the first re-emergence of the virus in Syria since 2014, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has said.
It said two cases of a paralysing strain were found in early May in people who had started to become become paralysed, and as one in a healthy child.
The strain of the virus was vaccinederived poliovirus type 2. Vaccinedervied polioviruses are mutations of polio strains used in the oral polio vaccine, and can cause outbreaks in places where where vaccine coverage is poor.
The original wild type 2 has not been detected anywhere since 1999, but other types of wild poliovirus have caused three cases in Afghanistan and two in Pakistan this year, and there have also been four vaccine-derived cases in Congo.
In Syria, a wild poliovirus type 1 outbreak caused 36 cases in 20132014, before being successfully stopped. There were two vaccination campaigns in Deir al-Zor in March and April this year but only limited coverage was possible, since access Zor is compromised by security problems, the group said in a statement said.
However, detection of the cases did demonstrate that disease surveillance systems were functional in Syria, it added.
On May 29 a World Health Organization spokeswoman told Reuters that there had been 50 cases of acute flaccid paralysis in the governorate since the start of 2017, but no stool samples had yet tested positive for polio.
“Insecurity continues to severely hamper access in Deir Ez-Zor and other parts of Syria. This not only adversely affects vaccination, but also the transportation of stool samples to polio labs to be tested for polioviruses,” she said.
The virus, which invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours, spreads rapidly among children, especially in unsanitary conditions in war-torn regions, refugee camps and areas where healthcare is limited.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, launched in 1988, originally aimed to end all transmission of the disease by 2000.
Success would make polio only the second human disease to be eradicated
since smallpox was banished in 1980.
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GENEVA: A cholera outbreak of more than 100,000 cases has erupted in warravaged Yemen, killing nearly 800 people, in just over a month, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
The UN health agency said that since the end of April, 101,820 suspected cholera cases had been registered across 19 of the country’s 21 governorates, including 789 deaths.
WHO has warned that a quarter of a million people could fall sick with cholera by the end of the year in Yemen, a country where two-thirds of the population are on the brink of famine.
British charity Oxfam also voiced alarm at what it described as “a run- away cholera epidemic” in Yemen, pointing out that the disease is currently killing nearly one person every hour.
Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread through contaminated food or water.
Reining in the disease is particularly complicated in Yemen, where two years of devastating war between the Huthis and government forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab military coalition has left more than half the country’s medical facilities out of service.
Yemen’s conflict has killed more than 8,000 people and wounded around 45,000 since March 2015, according to the WHO.
“Yemen is on the edge of an abyss. Lives hang in the balance,” Sajjad Mohammed Sajid, Oxfam’s Yemen country director, said in a statement.
“Cholera is simple to treat and prevent but while the fighting continues the task is made doubly difficult,” he said, insisting that “a massive aid effort is needed now.”