The case, Kenya's first in 22 years, was imported from Somalia and marks a resurgence in East Africa brought on in part by anti-western policies set by Islamic clerics.
Kenya has reported its first polio case in 22 years with the infection of a 3-year-old Somali refugee girl marking a new setback in the global effort to eradicate the crippling disease, officials said Tuesday.
The case brings to 26 the number of countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that have been reinfected since a 2003 vaccine boycott by hard-line Nigerian Islamic clerics who claimed that the polio vaccine was part of a U.S.-led plot to render Nigerian Muslims infertile or infect them with AIDS.
World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the Somali girl found infected in Kenya had a polio strain from Somalia, which has been re-infected with the virus since 2005 after it had been polio-free for three years. The virus had been imported to Somalia from Nigeria, she said. Ethiopia, which also borders on Kenya, was reinfected with the polio virus in 2004 and is currently reporting 37 cases, Chaib said.
The girl who developed the symptoms on Sept. 17 was in a refugee camp in the Dadaab area of northeastern Kenya, which recently has seen an upsurge in arrivals of Somalis fleeing violent clashes between pro-government militia and Islamic forces in southern and central Somalia. More than 34,000 Somali refugees have arrived in Kenya since the beginning of the year, said Jennifer Pagonis from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
There are currently 215 reported cases in 14 out of 19 regions in Somalia. The chaotic nation has no effective central government and little medical infrastructure. The "outbreak in Somalia and Ethiopia is widespread among the ethnic Somali population," said Chaib, adding that this had "put Kenya at high risk."
The infected girl reportedly had been vaccinated, but it is "rather common" that a vaccinated child still can get infected until immunization is completed, said Chaib. "Several vaccination rounds are necessary to really ensure optimal vaccination for children." The last polio vaccination in Kenya took place Sept. 9-12, Chaib said.
Health officials are investigating the case and preparing for additional immunization rounds, which aim at reaching all unvaccinated Kenyan and refugee children under the age of 5 in the northeastern part of the country, she said. The next round is supposed take place Nov. 3-7 and the second Dec. 1-5 and be coordinated with Somalia and Ethiopia, she added. WHO and other organizations had to give up on their 2005 deadline to eradicate the disease. The campaigners said last week that it is still possible to rid the world of polio, but that it will take at least another year.
Polio is spread when unvaccinated people — mostly children under 5 — come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and deformation and, in some cases, death.
The United Nations on Tuesday appealed for $35 million to provide food aid and other relief operations over the next six months for Somali refugees in Kenya. UNHCR finds it is difficult to keep up with the influx of refugees, Pagonis said. "We fear this figure could climb to 80,000 by the end of the year," she said,
The number of Somalis fleeing to Kenya started increasing after a radical Islamic militia began seizing control of their country. "In the past two weeks the arrival rate reached 1,000 a day on several occasions and 2,000 a day on Oct. 4 and 5," Pagonis said. The three Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, 50 miles from the Somali border, are home to about 160,000 people, most of whom have fled Somalia since the outbreak of a civil war there in 1991.
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