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Published On: Sun, Jan 26th, 2014

Pakistan reports first four polio cases of 2014

After reporting 91 cases in 2013, the most from the three remaining endemic countries, the first four wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases reported in 2014 have been from Pakistan, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) this week.

Pakistan map CIAThe public-private partnership whose goal is to eradicate polio from the planet says all cases were reported from North Waziristan, FATA, Pakistan. North Waziristan is the district with the largest number of children being paralyzed by poliovirus in the world. As long as polio still exists in reservoirs like North Waziristan, the world will always be at risk of outbreaks.

Nigeria and Afghanistan, the two other polio endemic countries have not reported any cases so far this year.

On the Horn of Africa, which experienced a large outbreak of polio during 2013, added four more cases to the 2013 total.

The GPEI reports that Ethiopia and Somalia each reported new cases of WPV1 during the past week, one and four cases, respectively. These cases all represented onsets of polio in 2013, thus will be included with the 2103 numbers.

The total number of WPV1 cases in the Horn of Africa is now 213 (189 from Somalia, 14 from Kenya and nine from Ethiopia). The most recent WPV1 case in the region had onset of paralysis on 20 December (from Bossaso district, Bari region in Somalia), according to the GPEI.

These are the first wild poliovirus cases reported in Somalia since 2007, in Kenya since July 2011, and in Ethiopia since 2008.

Polio is a disease caused by a virus that is mainly spread by person-to-person contact and eating or drinking items contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Polio can also be spread through water, other drinks, and raw or undercooked food.

Most people with polio do not feel sick. Some people have only minor symptoms, such as fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, cough, stiffness in the neck and back, and pain in the arms and legs. Most people recover completely. In rare cases, polio causes permanent loss of muscle function in the arms or legs (usually the legs) or death.

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About the Author

- Writer, Co-Founder and Executive Editor of The Global Dispatch. Robert has been covering news in the areas of health, world news and politics for a variety of online news sources. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the website, Outbreak News Today and hosts the podcast, Outbreak News Interviews on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify Robert is politically Independent and a born again Christian Follow @bactiman63

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  1. Chris Salter says:

    Re: http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/pakistan-reports-first-four-polio-cases-of-2014/

    I picked up the above via your RSS feed (using FeedDemon’s MSIE API). In order to add it to the ppn newsfeeds I opened it in another browser (Opera) but your server returned “The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later”. I repeated the GET using Firefox with the same result. Meanwhile I could still navigate your site in the MSIE session. Not come across this before with your site. This was at around 1600 hrs GMT on Sunday 26th.

    Regards,

    Chris Salter.
    Editor/Owner Post-Polio News.

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