and because of extra immunization campaigns planned in response, the risk of international spread of this polio strain from Laos was low.
Source:Leadership Online
Tuesday, 13 October 2015 09:24
Global Efforts To Eradicate Polio Suffers Setback With New Case In "Laos" (NOT Lagos!)
Important Notice: "The above headline appeared on the source of this article showing the location of the Polio breakout as "Lagos", but this is a reporter's error as the article's body clearly shows this location as "LAOS", a Southeast Asian country.
We feel obligated to report this as in the source article because many of our readers and citizens would see it on the National Dailies and this is our way of bringing attention to the error to allay any alarm by readers , especially in Lagos, and still inform them of a health issue in another part of the world
World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday announced that Laos has suffered a case of vaccine- derived polio which is a new setback to a global effort to eradicate the crippling disease after the virus resurfaced in Ukraine and Mali. The WHO said an 8-year-old boy died of the disease on September 11, and genetic sequencing suggested the virus strain has been circulating in the area of Bolikhamxay province, which has low immunization rates, for more than two years. There is no cure for polio, which attacks the nervous system and could cause irreversible paralysis within hours of infection. But a global vaccination campaign has all but beaten the wild polio virus, with only Pakistan and Afghanistan reporting cases of wild polio virus infection this year.
Specialists have warned that vaccine-derived cases – such as this one in Laos and previous ones in Ukraine and Mali – could hamper progress towards global eradication. The WHO stressed that “ending polio for good requires eliminating both wild and vaccine-derived polio.” It added, however, that because of relatively limited travel to and from this area,
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