Indonesia finds new polio cases - WHO
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Indonesia has found two new polio cases but the government has taken the right steps to control its first outbreak of the crippling disease in a decade, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday.
The confirmation of new cases brings the total infections in Indonesia’s densely populated West Java province to six, said Georg Petersen, the U.N. health agency’s representative in Indonesia.
Indonesia is the 16th previously polio-free country to be reinfected in the past two years.
“We got the information from the Ministry of Health, that as of yesterday afternoon we were told the total confirmed cases of polio was six,” said Petersen.
Asked if the government was getting the outbreak under control, he said:
“Indonesia has a long experience with vaccination programmes against polio and also has a very good programme, so we are very confident of that.”
“The Ministry of Health and the government of Indonesia and the districts involved in this have done exactly what they are supposed to do.”
Polio mainly hits children under five and can cause irreversible paralysis, deformation and sometimes death.
The outbreak occurred last month in a village near the city of Sukabumi, about 100 km (62 miles) south of Jakarta. Additional confirmed cases have since emerged in neighbouring villages, with several suspected cases still being investigated.
Around 5,000 children in West Java have been vaccinated in recent weeks. Preparations are under way for a major programme to vaccinate 5.2 million children at the end of May across the provinces of West Java, Banten and the city of Jakarta.
The WHO has said the Indonesian cases are almost identical to a strain circulating in parts of Africa and that the disease may have reached the country from Africa via the Middle East.
Health officials said it may have been carried by a migrant worker or a Haj pilgrim who visited Saudi Arabia before returning to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim
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