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Poliomyelitis, also known as polio, is a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects children.
The virus is transmitted from person to person and is spread by fecal-oral route, contaminated water or contaminated food. Symptoms of poliomyelitis include fever, sore throat, headache, vomiting, fatigue, backache, legs and muscle weakness or tenderness.
The disease can be life-threatening as it can reduce breathing capacity and cause difficulty swallowing and talking.
Despite the many years of disease research conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies, there is still no cure and it can only be prevented by vaccination. However, as a result of various initiatives and interventions, the number of cases of the disease has been reduced by more than 99% worldwide.
The WHO Region of the Americas was certified polio-free in 1994, followed by the WHO Western Pacific Region in 2000 and the WHO European Region in June 2002.
In 2014, the WHO South-East Asia Region was also certified polio-free, marking a breakthrough in global eradication.
This is important because these actions have enabled about 80% of the world's population to live in certified polio-free areas. Many millions of people who would otherwise have been paralyzed can walk and many deaths have been avoided.
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Ghana was declared polio-free in 2009, and by April of this year, when it was celebrating its tenth birthday, it had no cases of the disease.
But the WHO warns that if only one child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting the disease.
That's why the Daily Graphic is worried about reports that the polio virus was found in a Tamale municipal wastewater treatment plant during an environmental health surveillance last week.
WHO has already warned that failure of polio eradication in endemic areas such as Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan could result in up to 200,000 new cases each year worldwide. This calls for resolute and energetic action by the Ghanaian health authorities to ensure that the disease is not transmitted to humans.
The Daily Graphic commends the Ghana Health Service (GHS) for its effective surveillance to detect the virus in time.
In the meantime, we do not know if the virus has ever been pbaded on to humans. This is why we believe that the GHS, as well as its partners, should be praised for their initial actions, including a detailed field survey conducted by researchers, to badess and identify risks. possible source of infection and determine the extent of geographic spread.
The badurance given by Dr. Badu Sarkodie, Director of Public Health at the GHS, is also comforting that if the reports suggested a small percentage of unvaccinated children against polio, the GHS would declare a mbad immunization exercise across the country for children under five, because there is still no cure for polio.
Already, it is suspected that the virus has resurfaced as a result of cross-border contamination, which is highly possible because of our porous borders. We must therefore continue to conduct and strengthen our routine environmental monitoring so that we can detect these threats in time, as we have done.
We join the ministry in encouraging Ghanaians to observe better practices in personal hygiene and sanitation, and to report any symptoms of the disease to health authorities to prevent its spread and protect human beings.
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