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Polio Reported in Botswana, Its First Case Since 1991
April 15, 2004
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Botswana has reported its first case of paralytic polio
since 1991, as the spread of the disease from northern
Nigeria further jeopardizes efforts to eradicate it, the
World Health Organization said yesterday.
Botswana is the ninth previously polio-free country where
the crippling disease has reappeared in recent months and
the farthest from its presumed source, northern Nigeria.
There, officials stopped polio vaccinations because of
religious and political opposition, said officials of
W.H.O., a United Nations agency in Geneva.
The Botswana case involves a 7-year-old boy from the Ngami
district of northwestern Botswana whose paralysis began on
Feb. 8. The health organization did not disclose his
current condition.
Unicef, W.H.O., Rotary International and the government of
Botswana are preparing an emergency response to the case,
including heightened disease surveillance throughout
Botswana and a nationwide immunization campaign.
Scientists confirmed that the virus isolated from the boy
in Botswana came from Nigeria by laboratory tests that
showed it was genetically similar to the strain that has
been infecting children in Nigeria, W.H.O. said.
In the past 18 months, polio viruses genetically linked to
northern Nigeria have caused new cases of polio in nine
previously polio-free countries. Besides Botswana, they are
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African
Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo.
Polio virus is endemic in five countries besides Nigeria:
Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger and Pakistan. Polio was
endemic in 125 countries when W.H.O. began its polio
eradication program in 1988.
Nigeria has experienced an extensive outbreak of polio that
the health agency said resulted from the suspension of
polio immunization campaigns in Kano and other northern
states in August 2003.
As of last month, all states in Nigeria, except Kano, had
resumed mass polio immunization efforts.
Earlier this year, health ministers from countries affected
by polio pledged to stop transmission of the virus by the
end of 2004, a year earlier than W.H.O.'s goal to eliminate
polio.
But the polio case in Botswana highlights the magnitude of
the risk posed to polio-free areas by outbreaks of the
disease in west and central Africa.
Polio can spread anywhere as long as there is a case
somewhere, said Dr. David L. Heymann, who directs W.H.O.'s
polio eradication program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/health/15POLI.html?ex=1083167134&ei=1&en=8e061bbb7e12d362
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