20 October 2006

Polio Returns to Kenya; Vaccination Campaigns Gear Up

First Kenyan case in 22 years suspected to come from Somalia

 

A health care worker gives a polio vaccine to Somali children. Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya vaccinated millions of children under age five in September 2006 in the largest synchronized vaccination campaign ever undertaken in the Horn of Africa. (© AP Images)

A health care worker gives a polio vaccination. (© AP Images)

By Charlene Porter
Staff Writer

Washington – A three-year-old girl living in a refugee camp in Kenya’s Garissa district has been stricken with the wild poliovirus, the first case to appear in the East African nation in 22 years.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) reported October 18 that the virus was imported from neighboring Somalia where an outbreak has led to almost 220 cases over the last 15 months.

National and international health officials are taking steps to prevent an outbreak from going any farther.

“We are strengthening surveillance in the whole district and particularly the border points where people are coming in,” according to Dr. James Nyikal of Kenya’s Ministry of Health as quoted by the Voice of America. “We have been giving all children coming in both measles and polio vaccinations. So, we are continuing this, but we will heighten surveillance.”

A vaccination campaign set for November 3 in northeastern Kenya will target 250,000 children to receive the oral poliovirus vaccine. That effort follows a broad regional program encompassing Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia completed in September. GPEI called it the largest synchronized vaccination campaign ever conducted in the Horn of Africa.

The child from Garissa district reportedly was vaccinated in that campaign, but achieving immunization routinely takes three doses of vaccine.  She was paralyzed by polio on September 17.

GPEI reports some difficulty in conducting a vaccination campaign in the Horn of Africa and in estimating its full effectiveness, because a largely nomadic population moves frequently within the area and across the borders of the three nations. That operational environment has been challenged further by droughts, floods and conflict, which have adverse effects on conducting a comprehensive immunization campaign.

GPEI is a partnership joining Rotary International, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and other governments and organizations in a concerted effort to eliminate the crippling disease everywhere in the world. Currently, the virus occurs naturally in the environment in only four nations: Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria.

In the last several years, 26 nations previously declared polio-free have experienced a reappearance of the disease, according to GPEI. Most of these cases are attributed to a lapse in vaccination in Nigeria in 2003-2004 that allowed a resurgence of wild virus and its migration to other countries.

Genetic sequencing of the new Kenya case indicates the virus originated in Nigeria, and passed through Somalia before arriving in Garissa.

GPEI reports a total of 1441 polio cases in 2006 as of October 17, about 50 more than the same period in 2005.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky has stated that eradication of polio is “a key foreign policy objective and one of [the Bush administration’s] highest international public health priorities.” (See related article.)

Additional information on GPEI and a Kenya profile are available on the program’s Web site.