BY GRACE AUKA SALMANG

IN its efforts to respond to the emergency polio outbreak in the Eastern Highlands, the Eastern Highlands Provincial Health Authority (EHPHA) has set up an emergency polio outbreak response committee.

EHPHA chief executive officer Dr Joseph Apa made this known yesterday regarding the outbreak in the province.

“The key interventions of the EHPHA and partners will include community level surveillance, advocacy at all levels using available mediums, scale up vaccination activities throughout the province and set up an Emergency Operation Centre.

“On June 21 this year, one confirmed vaccine derived polio virus (VDPV) was reported from Lae, Morobe Province, which the index case was linked to the Lufa District in the Eastern Highlands.

“Since then a stool specimen analysis from healthy children in Lae and Lufa revealed VDPV type 1 and type 3 respectively, indicating that virus is circulating in the community,” he said.

He said the EHPHA plans are to interrupt circulation of poliovirus through increasing the polio vaccination coverage to more than 90 per cent in children under the age of five and increase AFP surveillance.

He said the EHPHA will need the assistance of its partners to reach out to every child, even in the most remote areas of the province.

“One part of the of the committee will take care of the governance work while the other part will manage the operations of making technical runs in the eight districts of the province.

“The governance part of the committee will meet every two weeks while the operational part will come together and meet every week.

“The activities undertaken will be of planning and co-ordinating the implementation of emergency interventions over the next 12 months,” he said.

Polio free was certified in PNG in the year 2000, but oral polio vaccines are still part of the routine immunization especially to prevent polio from re-imerging in the country.

And after 16 years in 2016, the new polio vaccine (IPV) was introduced along with polio oral drops for children under the age of one year.

However, over the years, polio coverage remains low and this created the opportunity for the polio infection to return.

On June 25, the Department of Health declared a polio outbreak in PNG. And on the following day on June 26, the National Executive Council declared the polio outbreak as a national public health emergency with Morobe, Madang and the Eastern Highlands as the infected provinces.