Sierra Leone hosts regional meeting on polio surveillance

KEMO CHAM in Freetown

The Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, will be host to a high profile regional workshop aimed at strengthening surveillance of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), a condition caused by the debilitating illness called Poliomyelitis or polio.

The four day confab which runs from Tuesday, May 16 to Friday May 19, is geared towards harmonising West Africa’s response to the viral disease which mainly affects children and leading to the paralysis.

A media advisory from the country office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday says the meeting will also discuss other vaccine preventable diseases in the region.

Africa has been struggling to be declared Polio free, with Nigeria serving as an obstacle to this. Due to the unrest caused by the terrorist group Boko Haram’s insurgency, health authorities have been unable to contain recurrent outbreaks of the wild polio in the country’s majority Muslim northern region.

Nigeria, alongside Afghanistan and Pakistan, are the three countries where wild Polio remains persistent. A total of 36 cases were recorded in 2016 between these three countries, according to WHO.

WHO says Nationwide AFP surveillance is the gold standard for detecting cases of poliomyelitis as part of the worldwide Eradication Initiative that was launched in 1988.

“The [Freetown] meeting will assess the polio surveillance system in all areas including coordination, planning, monitoring/supervision, the level of knowledge of health workers involved in AFP surveillance, detection and notification of cases, and data management,” the world health agency said in a statement.

Participants for the meeting are mainly immunization programme managers from nine West African Countries, as well as from WHO headquarters and Regional Office for Africa, the US Center for Disease Control and other partners.

It will be held at the Bintumani Hotel in the west end of Freetown.

[First published on www.politicosl.com]