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Polio strikes in DRC
19/05/2006 17:45 - (SA)
Geneva - Polio has returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the first time in six years, said the World Health Organisation on Friday.
WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib said a two-year-old girl had been paralysed by a strain of the polio virus, carried from India via Angola.
She said the agency was planning a vaccination campaign in the child's home region near the Angolan border to stifle the spread of a virus.
There were less than 1 900 global polio cases in 2005. There were 350 000 in 1988.
Polio is still endemic in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The WHO-spearheaded efforts to eradicate the crippling and potentially lethal disease in 2003.
But its programme was set back when the disease spilled from endemic areas - particularly Nigeria - into 23 other countries.
This forced the WHO to organise new vaccination campaigns, which have been largely successful, said Chaib. But the campaigns have siphoned resources needed to wipe out the reservoirs of polio.
Besides the DRC, so-called imported polio is also present in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia and Yemen.
The last polio case in the DRC was reported in 2000.
Chaib said experts were optimistic they could tackle the disease in the DRC.
She said the paralysed girl lived in the Bas Congo region, a haven of relative calm with better health facilities than other parts of the strife-torn central African nation.
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