outbreak was declared in May last year<\/a> following the detection of poliovirus in waste water in the two main cities, Lae and Port Moresby.<\/p>\nIn the latest polio update provided to RNZ Pacific, the Health Minister Elias Kapavore said the country currently had five cases of children paralysed by polio.<\/p>\n
“These children are receiving appropriate care and rehabilitation,” Kapavore said, applauding the efforts of health workers to reach remote villages to identify the cases.<\/p>\n
As of October, 64 positive detections of the virus were reported across PNG – Morobe Province had the most cases with 32, National Capital District had 25, while Eastern Highlands and Western Highlands had 3 and 4 cases respectively.<\/p>\n
“Since 13 October, no further positive samples have been confirmed,” the minister said.<\/p>\n
Mass immunisation drive<\/p>\n
Kapavore said the outbreak occurred because vaccination rates of children in PNG were very low.<\/p>\n
But he said with support from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and others, a campaign to vaccinate children against polio swung quickly into gear. New Zealand contributed $2 million.<\/p>\n
“With commitment from many of our partners, we got many of our provincial health authorities for our 22 provinces to engage in this campaign to vaccinate more than 2 million children in the past twelve months,” he said.<\/p>\n
Kapavore said while the vaccination target of 95 percent of children was not achieved, 83 percent was still a good result. The benefits are starting to be seen in some of the polio hotspots.<\/p>\n
Lae City’s Angau Memorial Hoispital acting medical services director Dr Lincoln Menda said Morobe has benefited from a “massive, massive vaccination right across Morobe Province”.,<\/p>\n
“We have vaccinated a majority of the vulnerable populaion, especailyl children, and we have prevented infection.<\/p>\n
Awareness<\/p>\n
Menda described the polio response as “an ongoing issue” with efforts to grow public awareness about polio in the wider community remaining a priority.<\/p>\n
“We are continuously giving them education on the universal precautions such as washing hands, using the toilets straight and disposal of toilets in the right places.”<\/p>\n
Kapavore said overcoming lingering vaccine hesitancy that surged during the Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge.<\/p>\n
“It’s an issue that we were challenged with, with regard to public perception about vaccinations as a result of Covid-19.<\/p>\n
“But there’s been more awareness conducted by many of our health workers. And people have now accepted the fact that we must allow our children to be vaccinated.”<\/p>\n
Kapavore expressed gratitude to PNG’s partners who helped in the polio response – including the Australian, New Zealand and Japanese governments, Unicef, the WHO and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Health Organization says it has confirmed two polio infections in PNG. Photo: Supplied \/ UNICEF\/PNG\/Chamber Senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[48,47,134,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-277927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-public-radio","17":"tag-radio-new-zealand","18":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n