By Mama A Touray
The Gambia Honorable Minister of Health has declared an outbreak of polio disease in the country. The declaration has prompted the Ministry of Health to declare a national health emergency to help counter further spread of the disease across the country, as the Minister noted that two types of the viruses have been detected in Banjul and Kotu.
Minister of Health, Dr Ahmadou Lamin Samateh disclosed the outbreak of the polio disease in The Gambia on Tuesday during a press conference held at the Ministry’s conference room, Banjul.
”As you may be aware, a lot of global efforts have been made towards kicking polio out of the face of this world. In 1998, the Global Polio Eradication initiative (GPEI) was launched to guide global efforts to eradicate polio. Since then the annual global polio incidence has decreased by more than 99 percent,” he said.
”The Gambia last detected a polio case in 1986 and was certified as polio free in 2004.Over the years, the country has achieved and maintained high polio vaccination coverage in its commitment to the global polio eradication goal. The country also conducted 27 high quality supplementary immunization activities (SIAs) from 1997 to 2014 to boost immunity against polio, these activities were carried out in the presence of robust surveillance system to detect polio cases when they occur.
”In May 2021, with the support from the World Health Organization and other partners, The Gambia initiated environmental surveillance to supplement the traditional Acute Flaccid Paralysis ( AFP) polio surveillance system presently, environmental samples collected from the AFP cases and the environment are sent to the regional polio laboratory in Dakar for analysis,” he stated.
No AFP sample, the Minister said, from The Gambia has tested positive for polio, adding “however two environmental samples collected from sewage sites, one from Banjul and the other from Kotu, have tested positive for polio virus type 2, this has created a polio outbreak situation in the country since a single positive polio virus case is considered an outbreak under the 2005 International Health Regulations, thereby requiring an urgent response to breaking transmission.”
”Many other countries are already affected by this type of virus in the sub region, sequencing result shows that the viruses detected in The Gambia are genetically linked to other viruses detected in the sub region such as in Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria. Thus, evidence of importation and it is important to note that this outbreak is an evidence polio virus circulation within the population but does not mean a detected of polio paralysis in the population,” Dr Samateh added.