Forty health experts from nine countries will conclude a four-day Polio surveillance workshop lead by the World Health Organization (WHO), at the Bintumani Hotel, Aberdeen. The experts discussed the recommendations made from an external surveillance review conducted in 2016, in the various countries.
The workshop is to harmonize action plans for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) and other vaccine preventable diseases (VPD).
According to Michael N’dolie, Surveillance Officer on Expanded Programmes on Immunization (EPI) at WHO, stated that during meeting, participants developed a one-year action plan to strengthen AFP and VPD surveillance in the nine countries, to be followed by the other countries.
The external review is part of the polio end game activities to ensure that all countries remain polio free, and Sierra Leone was selected to host the harmonization workshop, as it was one of the nine countries reviewed in 2016.
At the opening of the workshop, representatives from the nine countries gave updates on progress made on surveillance performance from the review recommendations in their countries.
The WHO Surveillance Officer furthered that despite performance is good in terms of implementation, there is a funding gap to improve on activities, and funds have to be sourced at local level to compliment donor support.
He disclosed that participants developed individual country plans, taking into consideration the review recommendations and other risk factors or activities not addressed by the reviewers.
For a country to be certified polio free there has to be the absence of wild polio virus for a period of at least five years, and also the country has to show a high level of surveillance activities.
For Sierra Leone some of the risk factors include access to carry out polio surveillance in hard to reach areas and some districts are behind meeting the AFP surveillance indicators, as well as inadequate response to alerts from community respondents.
Questioned whether the plans will see the complete eradication of polio, Michael N’dolie responded that presently there is no active transmission of wild polio virus in West Africa, however because WHO has not officially certified the continent polio free, countries should continue increased surveillance to ensure no country report a case of wild polio virus after the regional and global certification from WHO.
So far no wild polio case was reported in West Africa, since the start of 2017, but Afghanistan and Pakistan remains polio endemic countries.
Programme Manager, on EPI in Sierra Leone, Dr. Dennis Marke said slowly the world is getting closer to eradicating polio, and for this reason Sierra Leone must continue to carry out regular polio campaigns. He added that two campaigns were carried out this year and the third will take place in September.
By Ade Campbell
Friday May 19, 2017.