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 Confirmation of the outbreaks in Congo's Haut-Lomami and Maniema
provinces came less than a week after the WHO said polio had
resurfaced in Syria, in an area partly controlled by Islamic State.
"WHO assesses the risk of further national spread of these strains
to be high, and the risk of international spread to be medium," the
WHO, the U.N. health agency, said in a disease outbreak report.
Like the Syrian outbreak, the four Congolese cases were caused by
circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, which emerges in
areas with only patchy vaccine coverage after being excreted by
people who have been vaccinated.
In 1988, the goal of eradicating the disease globally was set for
the year 2000, but it has been repeatedly pushed back, with billions
of dollars spent on trying to snuff out the last remaining pockets
of disease.
The new head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcomed $1.2
billion of new funding for the battle against polio, made at the
Rotary Convention in Atlanta, the WHO said.
"It is humbling to see again the power of this incredible global
partnership to generate funding to fight one of the world’s most
horrible and debilitating diseases," Tedros said in a WHO statement.
"We must finish the job properly to ensure that there is no chance
of this terrible disease coming back."
Thirty years ago, polio paralyzed more than 350,000 children each
year in more than 125 countries around the world, the statement
said. Since then, incidence of the disease has been reduced by more
than 99.9 percent, it said.
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Polio invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible
paralysis within hours. It spreads rapidly among children. If
transmission can be ended, it would be only the second human disease
to be eradicated since smallpox was banished in 1980.
The original wild virus still circulates in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, with a total of five cases this year. Vaccine-derived
polio is a risk for war zones and other areas with poor health
coverage.
The Congolese cases are the first in the country since 2012.
Nigeria, Laos, Myanmar and Ukraine have also seen vaccine-derived
polio cases in the past three years.
(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Larry King)
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