Polio vaccination in Uganda.
WESTERN PROVINCE, KENYA -- Janet was born a healthy child in Kenya’s Western province, but when she was just 24 months old she contracted polio. The viral disease destroyed her muscles and nerves. She had difficulty swallowing, breathing and moving. From then on, she could not walk or play like the other children her age. Today, she still cannot walk without her crutches.
“Even the simplest movement is difficult for me. It breaks my heart to see children being struck with polio in this age when there are vaccination programs,” Janet says.
Now a public health officer in Bungoma and a mother of three, Janet says Poliomyelitis, also known as infantile paralysis or polio, can be prevented by a cheap and easy to administer vaccine. But despite the ease of preventing the disease, Kenya began a major campaign on Saturday to immunize more than 900,000 children in the wake of a polio outbreak just across the border in Uganda.
The first round of the five day campaign began on Saturday and will continue through Wednesday. Beth Mugo, Kenya’s minister of public health, says the vaccination drive aims to immunize 902,271 children – the number of vaccines available. The drive will cover districts in Nyanza, the Rift Valley and Western Provinces. Mugo says plans for the drive mobilized quickly when word of a wild polio virus outbreak was reported in Uganda’s Bugiri district, just 25 miles from Kenya’s border. A second and third round of vaccinations is scheduled in the area from December 11 to 15 and January 15 to 19.
The vaccination drive comes in the wake of a report by the World Health Organization, WHO, that discovered the first case of polio contracted here in 22 years. In October, a three-year-old Somali girl who was born in a refugee camp in northern Kenya contracted polio. WHO representatives confirmed that the girl tested positive for the polio virus and contracted it on Kenyan soil. News that Uganda, which shares Kenya’s western border, was too having an outbreak prompted swift action from public health officials here. Since 2007 there have been reports of refugees bringing polio into Kenyan camps, though it was believed the disease was acquired outside of Kenya.
Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that is often transmitted through contaminated food and water. Janet says up to 10 percent of polio cases can be fatal among children as the virus paralyzes the body’s nerves. “Polio is predominantly transmitted in areas where people live in poor hygienic conditions. The virus can be excreted and is easy to transmit among children living in places without access to proper toilet facilities,” she says. While people of all ages can contract polio, children under five have an increased risk of infection.
In the 1970s and 80s, an estimated one million people here were affected by polio. Nationwide prevention and vaccination campaigns took place beginning in 1984 with the assistance of the international community and the disease was controlled even in Kenya’s most rural districts.
Speaking two weeks ago during a media briefing, Mugo told reporters that the ministry, with support from WHO, UNICEF and other partners, would conduct house-to-house polio campaigns in all 22 at risk the districts. The government has allocated 200 million Kenyan shillings, $2.6 million USD, for enhanced surveillance and vaccination campaigns through January. Mugo appealed to parents and guardians with eligible children in the 22 districts to get their children vaccinated.
Dr. Willis Akhwale, head of disease control at the WHO, says he is encouraged to see east African countries being so vigilant, especially after a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo that left 62 people dead earlier this year. Akhwale says polio has reemerged in Congo, Angola, Burundi and now Uganda over the last two years.
Mugo says the government has enhanced cross border disease surveillance activities and information sharing with their Ugandan counterparts. And Akhwale says health workers have been deployed to the high-risk areas in Uganda to boost surveillance because when one case is detected it means there could be up to 2,000 people carrying the virus. He says only 72 percent of Uganda’s population is vaccinated against polio. “Experts [are] confident of no outbreaks when the coverage is between 95 to 100 percent,” he says.
Last Thursday, two days before the vaccination exercise began, Dr. Timothy Olubero, western provincial public health officer told reporters he believed the Ugandan outbreak may have originated in southern Sudan. But regardless of where it originated, Olubero says Kenya was acting quickly to prevent a polio outbreak here.
“Although it has been in Uganda, we cannot take chances. We have to take every precaution to deal with the situation,” Olubero says.
