Mozambique launches a vaccination campaign against polio
MAPUTO, May 20 (NNN-ALLAFRICA) — Health authorities in Mozambique declared an outbreak of wild poliovirus on May 18 after confirming that a child in the north-eastern Tete province had contracted the disease.
This marks the second imported case of wild poliovirus in southern Africa this year, following an outbreak in Malawi in mid-February 2022, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office for Africa said in a press release.
The lone case so far, is the country’s first since 1992. Genomic sequencing analysis indicates that the newly confirmed case is linked to a strain that was circulating in Pakistan in 2019, similar to the case reported in Malawi, WHO noted.
Polio is transmitted mainly via contaminated water and food, or through contact with an infected person. The virus can cause paralysis, and is sometimes fatal.
“Faced with this situation, and as international health regulations recommend, we must declare a public health emergency, and strengthen measures of surveillance, and vaccination against polio”, declared the National Director of Public Health, Quinhas Fernandes, at a Maputo press conference.
Fernandes said that in February a case of wild polio virus was notified in Malawi. In response, the countries of the region, notably Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi itself decided to launch vaccination campaigns against polio.
The vaccination campaign is about to enter its third round, and the Health Ministry is urging parents to take any unvaccinated children to the nearest vaccination post. “Only a fully vaccinated child is protected against this disease or has a very low risk of catching it”, said Fernandes.
The first two rounds of the campaign concentrated on the northern and central provinces. The third round will cover the entire country.
Poliomyelitis is a highly contagious disease, which attacks the nervous system, and can cause permanent paralysis or death. Its main victims are children under the age of 15.
Prior to April, the last case of polio registered in Mozambique was in 1993. In July 2016, Mozambique received, from the World Health Organisation (WHO), the certificate of a country free of polio.
Wild poliovirus was thought to have been eradicated on all continents except Asia. As of 2020, the only countries where the disease was still classified as endemic were Pakistan and Afghanistan.
All of Africa was declared free of polio in 2020, and so the cases in Malawi and Mozambique come as an unpleasant surprise, and as a reminder that, as long as somebody somewhere is carrying the virus, the possibility of transmission still exists.
According to WHO, both the Malawian and the Mozambican cases are linked to a strain of the virus found to be circulating in Pakistan in 2019. — NNN-ALLAFRICA
