World Health Organisation confirms polio outbreak in Papua New Guinea

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There are grave concerns for unvaccinated children in Papua New Guinea after a Polio outbreak was declared. The country is now aiming to rapidly vaccinate more than three million kids.

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00:00The World Health Organization declared the outbreak yesterday after detecting community

00:06transmission of the virus in the city of Ley. Polio virus type 2 has also been detected in

00:12wastewater samples here in the capital Port Moresby. It's a major concern for the country

00:17which has extremely low vaccination rates with less than 50 percent of people immunized against

00:23the disease. The PNG government along with partners including the WHO and UNICEF are

00:29preparing a rapid response with the aim of vaccinating children under the age of 11.

00:34But what it means is that our children have lower than lower immunity so they will be susceptible

00:42to disease. So the vaccine the virus that has come in is now exposing our children who did not see

00:50this virus before right we were polio free. So now we have this virus circulating in our communities

00:56disease. So we need to make sure our children are protected.

00:59It's the first case of polio detected in PNG since 2018 when there was a small outbreak of

01:05the virus that was brought under control in the same year. The WHO says the current outbreak

01:11has genetic links to a strain that's circulating in Indonesia which shares a land border with

01:17Papua New Guinea.

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