CV has 7 suspected polio cases; DOH-7 eyes region-wide vaccination drive

Children can be seen playing on this road leading to the interior portions of Sitio Carrots in Barangay Paknaan, Mandaue City. The community sits on top of an elevated portion a few meters beside Butuanon River | CDN Digital Photo Morexette Marie B. Erram

CEBU CITY, Philippines — With seven children in the region suffering from Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP), the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) plans to conduct an intensified polio immunization program for the entire region.

Dr. Jaime Bernadas, DOH-7 director, said that five of the seven children had already tested negative of the poliovirus while test results for the other two had yet to arrive from DOH’s main office in Manila.

AFP is a clinical syndrome defined by weakened muscle tone among children and is one of the indicators of possible poliomyelitis or polio.

Health workers conduct AFP surveillance to determine if a child is positive of polio.

Bernadas said they planned to implement an intensified immunization program for the region.

“Vaccination drives are still ongoing in the cities of Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Cebu, and there are plans to conduct them house-to-house with the help of barangay workers. But we are eyeing to expand this region wide,” he said in Cebuano.

Focus on Mandaue

However, while Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Cebu cities continue to conduct  ongoing vaccination campaigns through their own initiatives, the DOH-7 has been focusing on Mandaue City.

The DOH announced that environmental samples from Butuanon River in Mandaue City tested positive of poliovirus, prompting health officers here to activate their case-finding initiative, and vaccination campaigns.

This was because the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) confirmed that Butuanon River in Mandaue City had been contaminated with poliovirus.

As of last week, Bernadas said 15 percent of children in Mandaue City below 5 years old had been inoculated with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) while 5.8 percent had completed their oral polio vaccine (OPV) schedules.

“There is no cure to polio, however, it can be prevented through vaccination only. This is the reason why it’s important for our parents to know that getting your children inoculated against polio is the only way for their immune system to combat the virus,” said Bernadas.

Based on their 2016 data, DOH-7 is targeting 9,128 children for OPV while 17,000 for IPV.

In the Philippines, the polio immunization schedule directs parents to have their children administered with three shots of OPV, administered orally, then followed by an injection of IPV.

Polio reemerged in the Philippines last September 2019, after 19 years of being officially polio-free. Children below 5 years old are highly susceptible to contracting the disease, which can lead to paralysis./dbs