POLIO AFFAIRS – ‘Health officers to be tested in next campaign’

Lahore – The next anti-polio campaign starting from March 7 will be a test for all district health officers (DHO) and zero tolerance would be adopted against poor performing officers, Punjab Health Secretary Fawad Hassan Fawad said on Saturday.
He was addressing the DHO conference. Fawad said that poor performance of officers would not be tolerated at the cost of sufferings of children.
The conference reviewed progress of various ongoing programmes including Mother, Neonatal & Child Health (MNCH), FP & PHC, EPI, CDC and AIDS Control Programme at district level and evaluated the performance of DHOs.
The health secretary took serious notice of unauthorised use of vehicles of various health programmes by officers of other departments at the district level and directed immediate withdrawal of such vehicles.
He said that the performance of health programmes at district level would not be affected at any cost. Fawad also directed officials to include officials of other departments such as education, revenue and civil defence in the anti-polio campaign instead of volunteers.
The health secretary said that all motorcycles of the Extended Programme of Immunisation (EPI) be immediately returned to vaccinators. Fawad directed officers that all payments to officials participating in the anti-polio campaign be made through cheques. He directed officials that during the anti-polio campaign, counters for administering polio drops to children be established in front of all government hospitals to facilitate parents.
POLIOMYELITIS: Poliomyelitis is a viral disease that can affect nerves and can lead to partial or full paralysis. It is caused by infection with the poliovirus. The virus spreads by direct person-to-person contact, by contact with infected mucus or phlegm from the nose or mouth, or by contact with infected feces.
The virus enters through the mouth and nose, multiplies in the throat and intestinal tract, and then is absorbed and spread through the blood and lymph system. The time from being infected with the virus to developing symptoms of disease (incubation) ranges from 5 – 35 days (average 7 – 14 days).
RISKS INCLUDE: Lack of immunization against polio and then exposure to polio and travel to an area that has experienced a polio outbreak include the risks involved with the disease. In areas where there is an outbreak, those most likely to get the disease include children, pregnant women, and the elderly. The disease is more common in the summer and fall. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic.
Since the development of polio vaccines, the incidence of the disease has been greatly reduced. Polio has been wiped out in a number of countries. There have been very few cases of polio in the Western hemisphere since the late 1970s. Children in the United States are now routinely vaccinated against the disease.
Outbreaks still occur in the developed world, usually in groups of people who have not been vaccinated. Polio often occurs after someone travels to a region where the disease is common. Thanks to a massive, global, vaccination campaign over the past 20 years, polio exists only in a few countries in Africa and Asia. POLIO VACCINES: Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis (or polio).
The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated poliovirus. Human trials of Sabin’s vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962.
Because there is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in immunocompetent individuals, polioviruses have no non-primate reservoir in nature, and survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of time appears to be remote.
Therefore, interruption of person to person transmission of the virus by vaccination is the critical step in global polio eradication. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most countries in the world and reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,652 cases in 2007.
ACTION PLAN 2011: The continued transmission of poliovirus in Pakistan has become a national emergency. Pakistan now risks becoming the last remaining reservoir of endemic poliovirus transmission in the world, and the only remaining threat to achieving global polio eradication.
Poliovirus is continuing to cripple children in Pakistan because of the failure to reach all children with sufficient doses of vaccine. The reasons for this include inadequate government oversight and ownership, access problems due to security particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational and planning challenges, and the failure to identify and include all high risk underserved population groups.
In light of the situation and its national and global implications, the president of Pakistan has directed the immediate development of an emergency action plan for polio eradication in Pakistan. The current plan follows the Prime Minister’s Plan launched in the beginning of 2009 that focused on the enhanced inter-sectoral collaboration. The goal of the Emergency Action Plan is to interrupt transmission of poliovirus in Pakistan by the end of 2011.