Spread of polio an international emergency

Transcript

Please balance audio......thanks jm

The World Health Organisation has declared the spread of polio an international public health emergency.

Countries seeing a resurgence of the disease are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.

The WHO's Director of Communicable Diseases Dr Mark Jacobs told Jenny Meyer polio is a horrible disease and the situation is a timely reminder of the importance of vaccination.

MARC JACOBS: WHO was particularly concerned because of a number of examples of the spread of polio from one country to another country so far this year, and including during times of the year when the risk is normally lower. And so that suggests that there's quite a high risk of further spread, so it was important that we provide some urgent advice to the countries that are suffering from polio currently to really help them get onto it quickly.

JENNY MEYER: And in the Pacific region, how vulnerable are the Pacific countries to contracting polio, given the current state of the international situation?

MJ: In our region, our part of the world is called the Western Pacific Region by the WHO, and so that's all the Pacific countries plus the East Asian countries and Australia and New Zealand, and our region has been declared free of polio the year 2000. So that's obviously great. But that doesn't mean there is no risk. Whilst there's polio circulating anywhere in the world, there's still risk to the rest of us. The only guarantee that we're safe, is when there's no polio anywhere. And you know there are some countries in our region where their immunisation rates aren't as high as they need to be. But overall we are pretty well placed but we do need to be very careful about it and keep focussing on getting our polio immunisation rates up as high as they can be.

JM: What about places like the Solomon Islands that have recently suffered from natural disasters, does that place them at more risk, given that children are living in camps and things like that?

MJ: Certainly anything that disrupts the normal functioning of society can put public health at risk. And disease that are prevented through immunisations can certainly come back quite quickly if the normal immunisation services are disrupted. Certainly if we look at other parts of the world suffering from polio a number of those countries have got other big problems going on. You know countries like Syria is one of the one's that has recently exported polio and we  all understand you know the problems in Syria currently. I think there's no particular reason though for countries in out own region including the Solomons to be especially concerned about it. The Solomon Islands isn't one of the countries we think is particularly vulnerable because they've done pretty well with immunisation up until now against polio. But it is something that we do need to keep an eye on and of course the countries need to keep an eye on it because things can go bad quite quickly.