The World Health Organisation Independent Africa Regional Certification Commission for Polio Eradication, on August 25, 2020, officially declared Uganda and the African region free of wild polio virus.
The Ministry of Health in an August 12 press statement said Uganda is experiencing an out break of the infectious virus just like other African countries.
The Polio strain is dubbed “vaccine-derived polio virus type 2 (cVDPV2).”
The Ministry said that thier is an urgent need of vaccinating about 4.6 million children 5 years below in order to interrupt rapppid spread of the virus in the country.
Prof Pontiano Kaleebu, the director of Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), said the virus was discovered by their scientists a few weeks ago during a routine surveillance.
The scientists picked samples from sewage plants of Bugolobi and Lubigi in Kampala in June for laboratory analysis, according to Prof Kaleebu.
The polio virus can live in an infected person’s feces for many weeks and this can contaminate food and water in unsanitary conditions.
“Our team here at UVRI does surveillance with the aim of eliminating polio globally” Prof Kaleebu said.
Dr Henry Mwebesa, the Director-General of health services, in the August 12 statement, said “identification of a cVDPV2 from the environment in Uganda confirms that there are persons in the Kampala area shedding the disease.He said as high as 959 cases of cVDPV2 have been confirmed globally last year and that about 20 countries in the continent have cases of the virus.
