Health official says Kuwait polio-free since 1984

KUNA

Kuwait has not registered a single polio case since 1984, four years before the launch of the World Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, said Health Ministry Assistant Undersecretary for Public Health Majeda Al-Qattan said Tuesday.
"Kuwait's success to stop the spread of the poliovirus over this long period is the result of adopting a highly-effective poliovirus surveillance systems and precise strategies for immunization as well as increasing the number of polio vaccine dozes given to children in their first year to three," Al-Qattan said in a speech at the First Kuwait International Conference on Polio Eradication, kicked off here.

She also stressed that the Health Ministry's continuing training of medical staff at the preventive healthcare has also played an important role in Kuwait's success story in controlling the virus.

"Kuwait has exerted tremendous efforts to control all communicable diseases, especially polio." Al-Qattan, however, said that the recent statement of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee concerning the spread of wild poliovirus and re-emergency of the virus in former polio-free countries sounds alarm bell.

It raises alarms and shows that polio-free countries have to be vigilant to avoid the re-emergence of the virus, she cautioned.

Al-Qattan said that this two-day conference, attended by a plethora of health experts from across world health organizations, will tackle the key issues related to the polio surveillance and eradication efforts.

Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. It mainly affects children under 5 years of age.

One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5 percent to 10 percent die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
Polio cases have decreased by over 99 percent since 1988, from anestimated 350 000 cases then, to 416 reported cases in 2013. The reduction is the result of the global effort to eradicate the disease.

In 2014, only 3 countries (Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan) remain polio-endemic, down from more than 125 in 1988.

As long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting polio. Failure to eradicate polio from these last remaining strongholds could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world.