Polio returns in Venezuela after decades

Measles cases surge amid Venezuela’s crisis

A nurse stands and takes care of a patient during a medical exam at the hospital of Lure on June 8. (AFP)

CARACAS, June 10, (Agencies): Polio has been reported in Venezuela, a crisis-wracked country where the disease had been eradicated decades ago, the Pan-American Health Organization reports.

The organization said the child had no history of vaccination and lives in an under-immunized extremely impoverished Delta Amacuro state.

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a crippling childhood disease caused by the poliovirus, and preventable through immunization.

Doctor Jose Felix Oletta, a former Minister of Health, told AFP that the last case of acute poliomyelitis in Venezuela was reported in 1989.

“The virus especially affects people in conditions of malnutrition and unvaccinated, as this case,” Oletta added.

Oletta slammed health authorities in President Nicolas Maduro’s government for taking more than a month to notify the PAHO that it had identified the virus. International health regulations require it to do so within 24 hours.

Venezuela, devastated by economic and political crises, accounted for 85 percent of cases of measles reported across Latin America and the Caribbean over the past year, the Pan-American Health Organization reports.

Of the 11 countries that reported cases, Venezuela had the overwhelming majority of cases, but also 35 deaths since mid-2017, the international organization said.

More specifically, “there were eleven countries that reported 1,685 confirmed measles cases across the region,” of which 1,427 were in Venezuela, a PAHO report released Saturday found.

The disease is on the rise in the South American nation led by leftist President Nicolas Maduro; the trend has continued this year where cases have been reported in 17 out of 23 states, and in the capital.

In neighboring countries, where Venezuelans have migrated due to grim economic conditions, many of the reported cases have been among Venezuelan immigrants, the report said.

Venezuela says it does not have 85 percent of the basic medical supplies it needs even including vaccines. Maduro’s government blames US sanctions for the woes.

The government on April 6 launched a new vaccine campaign against 14 diseases including measles and TB.

GENEVA:

Also:

A deadly Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is stabilising, giving reason for cautious optimism, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

“It’s stabilising. We’re optimistic, cautiously optimistic,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Reuters.

He said he would travel to Congo on Sunday to check on progress a month into the outbreak, and would also go to neighbouring Central African Republic as part of a drive to build up health systems in the fragile and impoverished country.

The deadly virus has killed 27 people since the outbreak began in April, and there have been 62 cases, 38 of which were confirmed in a laboratory. A further 14 are probable Ebola cases, and 10 more people are suspected of having Ebola.

In contrast to previous Ebola outbreaks, health workers have moved quickly to halt the spread of the virus by vaccinating everybody who has had contact with Ebola patients, and everybody who has had contact with those primary contacts.

Using the vaccine to ring-fence patients has almost certainly slowed the spread of the disease, WHO’s Deputy Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama told a news conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

There had been no new cases since mid-May in two of the three areas hit by the disease — the initial outbreak zone of Bikoro and the city of Mbandaka, he said, describing the health response as showing “very strong progress”.

Most patients who have been vaccinated had the jab more than 10 days ago, enough time to be confident that they were now protected, he said.

Phase one of the disease response was about protecting the urban centres and towns and that had gone well, Salama said, but phase two, tackling the remote forested areas, was an enormous logistical effort that would go on for weeks.

PARIS:

The head of the French company at the centre of an international baby milk scandal denied last Friday that it was responsible for the contamination that triggered a recall of formula in over 80 countries, calling it “an accident”.

Lactalis, one of the world’s biggest dairy groups, was forced to recall 12 million packages of powdered baby milk in 83 countries in December and January after being linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning in children.

French officials began investigating the company after at least 36 infants fell sick from drinking milk sold under the Picot or Milumel brands. Cases of suspected contamination were also reported among children in Spain and Greece.