Polio outbreak in Syria: Virus is of Pakistani origin, says UNICEF

Minister alleges the virus reached the restive country through militants from Pakistan.

Preliminary evidence indicates that the poliovirus that has reportedly affected ten children in Syria is of Pakistani origin, a joint press statement issued by Unicef and World Health Organisation (WHO) claims.

The statement says this is the first polio outbreak in the restive country since 1999, and it poses a risk of paralysis to hundreds of thousands of children across the region.

According to BBC Urdu, the Syrian Minister for Social Affairs Kindah al Shammat has alleged that the militants, who have come from Pakistan to help Syrian rebels, ‘brought the virus’ with them. She offered no evidence and did not elaborate on the claim.

However, WHO representative Sona Bari said further test to find out the nature of the virus were under way. “It is only after these tests that we would be able to know how the virus reached Syria,” she is quoted by the BBC Urdu as saying.



The website reports that after evidence of polio virus, the UN has asked Pakistan government to make arrangements at all airports to give oral polio vaccine (OPGV) to children travelling outside the country.

“To stop a polio outbreak, the largest ever consolidated immunisation response in the Middle East is under way, aiming to vaccinate over 20 million children in seven countries and territories repeatedly,” the statement says.

It says emergency immunisation campaigns, in and around Syria to prevent transmission of polio and other preventable diseases, have vaccinated more than 650,000 children in Syria, including 116,000 in the highly-contested north-east Deir-ez-Zor province where the polio outbreak was confirmed a week ago.

“In a region that had not seen polio for nearly a decade, in the last 12 months poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples from Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and the State of Palestine. The outbreak of paralytic polio among children in Syria has catalysed the current mass response,” says Unicef and WHO joint statement released from New York and Geneva simultaneously on Novermber 8.

The WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Dr Ala Alwan noted, “The Middle East has shown exactly the coordinated leadership needed to combat a deadline virus: a consolidated and sustained assault on a vaccine-preventable disease and an extraordinary commitment to a common purpose.”

“The polio outbreak in Syria is not just a tragedy for children; it is an urgent alarm – and a crucial opportunity to reach all under-immunised children wherever they are,” said Unicef’s Chief of Polio Peter Crowley. “This should serve as a stark reminder to countries and communities that polio anywhere is a threat to children everywhere.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2013.