AP Features, May 13th, 2007
Myanmar will launch a polio immunization campaign after a toddler was found with the disease, the country's second case since it was declared free of the paralyzing illness seven years ago, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The campaign, launched by the health ministry and the United Nation's Children's Fund, begins Monday in western and northwestern Myanmar following the detection of a polio virus last month in a 2 1/2-year-old boy in northwestern Rakhine state near the Bangladeshi border, the Myanmar Times reported Sunday.
Health ministry official Dr. Than Htein Win was quoted as saying that the polio strain found in Rakhine state had never been detected in Myanmar before.
It was similar to a strain previously found in neighboring Bangladesh, he said.
"This is a situation in which the virus had been transmitted across the border from a neighboring country," the newspaper quoted the doctor as saying.
Myanmar's health ministry and UNICEF will vaccinate more than 500,000 children under the age of five in 17 townships in western Rakhine and Chin State, the Myanmar Times reported, quoting Than Htein Win, the manager of the immunization program.
A second round of vaccinations will be provided in June to 2.5 million children in Rakhine and Chin states, and in Magway, Ayeyarwaddy and western Bago divisions. A third round will provide repeat vaccinations to children in the same regions, the report said.
The country's first polio case since February 2000 was detected in a 19-month-old boy from Pyin Oo Lwin near Mandalay in central Myanmar last June.
Polio is spread when people _ mostly children under age five _ come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and deformation and, in some cases, death.
