Ghana suffers polio setback

Accra, Oct. 15, GNA- Ghana suffered a set back when she recorded six new polio cases between January and July this year depriving her of being certified Polio Free, Dr Kweku Afriyie, Minister of Health said on Wednesday.

The country recorded zero polio cases for the past two years. Launching, this year's National Immunisation Days (NIDs) in Accra, the Health Minister said three cases of the new wild poliovirus were identified in Northern Region, one each in the Eastern, Brong Ahafo, and the Western Regions.

"It is very unfortunate that these cases should set us back by another five years when we are almost near the certification of being polio free by the year 2005".

The first round of this year's NIDs campaign, which will start from October 24-26 and the second round in December 5-7 has a target of about 4.7 million children under five years.

About 42,000 volunteers and 3,000 supervisors will undertake the exercise at a cost of about 2.7 million dollars.

The World Health Organisation is organising the campaign with support form Japan Embassy, Rotary International, UNICEF, USAID, The Right to Play, an NGO and the Ghana Health Services.

Dr Afriyie called for the strengthening of the surveillance system to detect imported cases as early as possible to prevent widespread transmission of disease and to ensure that every single child is immunised.

He appealed to volunteers and supervisors to ensure that all eligible children within the catchment areas including the hard-to-reach areas were immunized.

Dr Kwadwo Antwi-Agyei, National Programme Manager of Expanded Immunisation programme said with the six new isolated cases recorded, "Ghana now ranks fourth in the world and second in Africa for having high number of polio cases.

He explained, "Scientifically, it is estimated that for each case of wild poliovirus identified, there are between one hundred to thousand sub-clinical cases walking about. "This means that for our six cases we have between 600-6000 children walking about harbouring the virus and capable of transmitting the disease to other children".

He said because of the high population movement on the boarders following the closure of the Ivorian ports to Burkina Faso, there were many children who missed the vaccination and the NIDs.

He called on communities, churches, chiefs, traditional leaders, politicians and individuals to support the programme to reach every child because "Ghana needs the dedicated support of us all in order not take us back from certification". 15 Oct 03