Barely a week after it confirmed the third case of polio in the country, the Department of Health (DOH) now reports another case coming from Mindanao, the fourth individual to contract the illness since polio re-emerged in the Philippines.
“The test conducted by our Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases-Japan confirms the fourth polio case in the country,” Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque said in a statement.
The DOH did not specify the age of the victim, nor where in Mindanao the case was found.
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However, the DOH said it is in the middle of a targeted polio vaccination campaign for all children below 5 years old in the municipalities where the third and fourth cases were discovered. The third case was detected in a 4-year-old girl from Datu Piang, Maguindanao. It was reported that she had not received the recommended dose of the oral polio vaccine before.
The nationwide campaign called Sabayang Patak Kontra Polio will be conducted in three rounds. The first round ended last October 27, 2019. The DOH says the second round will cover the whole of Mindanao and will happen from November 25 to December 8, 2019.
Duque urged the public to participate in the nationwide polio vaccination campaign, especially since the first round of polio vaccination was a success, with 95.4% or roughly 1.7 million ages 5 and below receiving the vaccines.
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“We can defeat polio, but we need the public to trust and actively participate in our immunization programs,” he said in the statement.
Polio or poliomyelitis is “a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease,” which spreads from person to person and can invade an infected person’s brain and spinal cord, causing paralysis. Symptoms include fever, sore throat, headache, nausea, tiredness, and stomach pain. According to the DOH, other symptoms of polio are vomiting, stiff neck, and sudden onset of floppy arms and legs.
“Polio is best prevented through vaccination,” said the DOH. “The virus is transmitted through the oral-fecal route. Handwashing will also help in prevention.”
The polio outbreak has been traced back to a weakened form of the virus used in vaccines. Click here to know what vaccine-derived polio is and how to protect your child.
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