MESSAGE FROM JENNY HORTON 5 MARCH 2007

 

Hi All,

 Sorry for the long absences with updates but WHO have stopped sending these now as all the information is available on the website….

www.polioeradication.org       but I have attached the case count and a article on the recent meeting at WHO HQ chaired by the DG.     This was attended by representatives from all areas involved with PEI  from Rotary we had RIP Bill Boyd   PRIP Jim Lacey and TRF Trustee Bob Scott (Polio Plus Chair).    

 Lets all pray that this year is a year we see the interruption of virus circulation in at least 3 of our endemic countries….

Pakistan is now having many problems with a few clerics spreading rumours about the vaccine and this is causing refusals from the parents.   We also saw a govt head bombed and killed in the area of one of these clerics.      It is a little uneasy here right now.        Two of our campaigns are over we have 7 to go for the year.    these are the easiest as it is still cool  by next campaign (March 27th) it will be much warmer which makes work very uncomfortable for all.    

Thanks for the ongoing interest in polio eradication… we will make it …..the last steps are the hardest.      

Regards 

Jenny 

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud".

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 CASE COUNT pdf                  Manna from Pakistan - March

 

 NEWS

28 February 2007
Stakeholders reach broad consensus to complete polio eradication - but without rapid injection of funds, global polio eradication effort is threatened 

Geneva: Today, governments, donors and international agencies leading the drive to eradicate polio fully supported the planned final attack on the poliovirus. 

Indigenous wild poliovirus survives in only parts of four countries – Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan – where transmission has never been stopped. Today's high-level Consultation on polio eradication agreed to raise within 12 months - and then sustain for as long as needed - the levels of vaccination coverage and child immunity in the areas with endemic polio to levels that stopped the disease altogether in the polio-free parts of these countries. Ten other countries are currently fighting the tail-end of outbreaks caused by importations of poliovirus. 

The Consultation outlined specific milestones in two areas where improvements would raise the coverage and immunity levels. The first is to ensure that vaccine reaches children by improving the quality of polio vaccination campaigns, strengthening health infrastructure, addressing security challenges, and by enhancing acceptance of vaccination through tailored social mobilization and community engagement strategies. 

Second, the Consultation agreed that there was a collective responsibility to mobilize the resources needed to complete polio eradication, in particular by filling the funding gap of US$ 575 million for 2007-2008. Of this amount, US$ 60 million is urgently needed by April. Just today in its Parliament, India outlined its firm financing commitment, and other endemic countries have outlined specific steps to provide domestic resources. The international donor community will now need to rapidly fulfill its commitment to securing the necessary resources. The first step is for donors to take the case for polio eradication back to their capital cities and present it to major international development fora between March and May. Without a rapid injection of funding, polio eradication activities will have to be curtailed, threatening the global polio eradication effort. 

The commitment of the four remaining polio-endemic countries remains strong and was re-affirmed by the presence at this Consultation of representatives from the offices of the Heads of Government. Together these countries vaccinate a total of 250 million children many times each year. The Consultation defined specific milestones to monitor whether the collective capacity of all polio eradication stakeholders is being fully harnessed to make concrete and rapid progress. 

The Consultation, called for by Dr Margaret Chan, WHO's Director-General, was hosted by the World Health Organization, with top representation from the other spearheading partners of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative – Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF – together with representatives from the endemic countries' ministries of finance and health, major donors, political organizations and independent technical experts. Of particular importance was the presence of special advisers to the heads of state of three of the four endemic countries. 

The eradication effort, predicated on reaching every child multiple times with oral polio vaccine, has reduced the number of polio cases worldwide by over 99%. Of the 193 Member States of the WHO, 189 have stopped transmission of indigenous wild poliovirus. 

Health official killed as Pakistanis label polio vaccine 'US plot'

Fri Feb 16, 10:17 AM ET

A Pakistani health official in charge of a campaign to innoculate children against polio has been killed in a bomb blast Friday, following rumours the vaccination was a US plot to sterilise them.

Abdul Ghani, who headed the government campaign in Bajaur tribal district near the Afghan border, was returning from a meeting with a local religious leader Friday when his vehicle was hit by a bomb.

"Ghani died on the spot while three policemen accompanying him were also injured," a local administration official Tariq Hasan told AFP.

Earlier, the government said the parents of some 24,000 children had refused to give them the polio vaccine because of a campaign by Muslim clergy.

Health officials have been trying to dispel rumours -- sometimes spread on local radio stations or from the loudspeakers of local mosques -- that the polio campaign is a Western and US conspiracy to reduce Muslim populations.

"The figure in media reports of 24,000 children missed out is close" to the exact number, said Waheed Khan, deputy director of North West Frontier Province health department

Khan told AFP this was due to "demand-based and religious-based refusals".

Pakistan last year confirmed 40 cases of the crippling disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. Polio is endemic in Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

However, authorities vaccinated 95 percent of the children in the remote region last month, Khan said.

"We have launched a campaign to convince parents that polio vaccination has nothing to do with religion and it does not affect fertility, or the ability to produce children," Khan said.

Khan said health workers had faced resistance in Pakistan's northwestern Swat, Dera Ismail Khan and Lucky Marwat districts as well as the tribal regions of Bajaur and Waziristan.

"There were campaigns against the vaccination drive on the local FM radio stations," Khan said.

The refusals were not purely on religious grounds and in some areas parents asked authorities to first provide them with electricity and computerised national identity cards before vaccinating their children, he said.

Khan said that religious scholars had issued an Islamic decree or fatwa in September last year saying there was nothing wrong with polio vaccination.