GENEVA — Kenya has reported its first new polio case in decades, the United Nations said Tuesday, with the infection of a three-year-old Somali refugee marking a new setback in the global effort to eradicate the crippling disease.
The first documented polio infection in 22 years in Kenya makes the East African nation the 26th country to have been re-infected since a 2003 vaccine boycott by hard-line Nigerian Islamic clerics claiming the inoculations were part of a U.S.-led plot to render Muslims infertile.
World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the Somali girl found infected in Kenya had a polio strain from nearby Somalia, which has been re-infected with the virus since 2005 after it being polio-free for three years.
Ethiopia, which also borders on Kenya, was re-infected with the polio virus in 2004 and is currently reporting 37 cases, Ms. Chaib said.
The girl, who developed the symptoms on Sept. 17, was in a refugee camp in the Dadaab area of northeastern Kenya, which recently has seen a surge in arrivals of Somalis fleeing violent clashes between pro-government militia and Islamic forces in southern and central Somalia.
The girl reportedly had been vaccinated, but it is “rather common” that a vaccinated child still can get infected before the immunization regimen is completed, Ms. Chaib said. “Several vaccination rounds are necessary to really ensure optimal vaccination for children.”
Health officials are investigating the case and preparing for additional immunization rounds, which aim at reaching all children under the age of five who have not yet been vaccinated, she said.
WHO and other organizations had to give up on their 2005 deadline to eradicate the disease. The campaigners said last week that it is still possible to rid the world of polio, but that it will take at least another year.
Polio is spread when unvaccinated people – mostly children under five – come into contact with the feces of those with the virus, often through water. The virus attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy and deformation and, in some cases, death.
Hard-line clerics in northern Nigeria led a boycott against immunization in 2003, telling followers that the CIA had tampered with the vaccine to leave Muslims infertile or spread AIDS among them. Some mothers hid their children from health workers.
Most of the clerics later dropped their boycott after tests on the inoculations showed no evidence of tampering, but the disease began spreading out of Nigeria and reinfecting countries, mostly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, that had previously eradicated the disease.
