Let’s support anti-polio vaccination

Daily Graphic, Pg. 11, Sat. Feb. 14/09

Article Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

Poliomyelitis (polio) is an infectious disease that usually causes lameness in the arms, legs or upper part of the body, especially of children.
Caused by a small germ called the polio virus, it affects the nerves and muscles of the body, causing permanent paralysis in children and it is mainly transmitted through person-to-person contact, especially in areas with sub-standard hygiene.
The polio virus lives in the throat and intestinal tract of infected persons. The virus enters the body through the victim’s mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the stool of an infected person. Objects such as eating utensils can also spread the virus.
The polio virus attacks the nerve cells that control muscle movement. Many people infected with the virus have few or no symptoms. Others have short-term symptoms such as headache, tiredness, fever, stiff neck and back, and muscle pain.
More serious problems happen when the virus invades nerves in the brain and causes paralysis of the muscles used in swallowing and breathing. Invasion of the nerves in the spinal cord can cause paralysis of the arms, legs, or trunk.
Symptoms usually start seven to 14 days after exposure to the virus. Infected persons are most contagious from a few days before to a few days after the start of symptoms. However, persons with polio can spread the infection for as long as the virus is in their throat or stool. The virus can be found in the throat for about one week after infection and in the stool for six weeks or longer.
According to health experts, polio can be easily avoided by using a safe vaccine which is given as drops in the mouth of children under five years.
Although the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Representative in Ghana, Dr Yasmine Haque, says that polio can affect people above the age of five, including adults, immunising children, who are more vulnerable to the virus, will help save them from the debilitating effects of the disease.
Ghana began its polio eradication exercise in 1996 and made significant progress by stopping the spread of the polio virus through routine immunisation and mass campaigns to vaccinate all children under the age of five.
As a result of the successful implementation of the National Polio Vaccination Days, Ghana was removed from the list of polio endemic countries in 2002 and the country had a perfect record in 2007, with no reported case of polio.
However, the confirmation of eight wild polio cases in the Northern Region from August to November last year is indeed a sad one and health experts are back in arms to ensure that the virus is totally eradicated from the country.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers a single confirmed case of polio paralysis to be evidence of an epidemic because of the highly infectious nature of the disease and according to the organisation, a single case means it is likely that many more people in that affected area are infected because many people do not exhibit early symptoms.
Total eradication of the virus, according Dr Haque, cannot be achieved if other West African countries are not involved in the eradication process and that is why the Ministry of Health in Ghana and other health partners such as the UNICEF, together with other health ministries in seven other African countries: Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, undertook a synchronised vaccination exercise in all the countries in February, this year with a second round of vaccination from March 26 to 29, 2009.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic at Glefe, a suburb of Mamprobi in the Ablekuma South District of the Greater Accra Region, where a team of nurses from the Mamprobi Polyclinic and volunteers had targeted to immunise 3,500 children under five years, Dr Haque said the eight reported cases may have entered the country through migration. She added that “polio-free Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked to the total polio-free of Africa”.
According to health experts, a synchronised immunisation exercise is timely and Northern Nigeria is considered as a health threat to West Africa because it has the highest cases of polio in West Africa.
The international borders are active and travelling individuals unknowingly carry the disease into endemic-free countries, therefore, until polio is eradicated from that area, occasional reports of polio spreading to its neighbours, according to Dr Haque, are likely to continue.
In response to the latest discovery in Ghana, a house-to-house exercise was conducted last year in seven regions: The Upper East and West, Northern, Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Volta and Eastern.
The exercise, which was undertaken in two parts from November 13 to 15 and December 11 to 13, 2008, was to ensure that the virus was halted from spreading further.