August 03, 2007	Friday	Rajab 18, 1428

PESHAWAR, Aug 2: Australia has announced public health alert after Victorian health authorities found a 22-year-old Pakistani infected with polio last month, WHO officials said.

“Polio generally hit people below the age of 15 years, but this unusual case has caused alarms in donor organisations working for eradication of polio,” said the officials. They said it was likely that Australia and other countries made polio vaccination certificate compulsory for travellers from Pakistan.

The polio victim, studying in Melbourne, had come to Pakistan in March and visited Swat and Kalam along with some friends from Karachi and Islamabad. He had also stayed for a while in Mardan from where he had got the services of a cook. Later, they had stayed for one night each in Swat and Kalam. In Kalam, he had stayed in a hotel owned and run by people from Khyber Agency.

Meanwhile, he developed some weakness in feet and laboratory tests conducted in the first week of July revealed that he had poliomyelitis.

According to the Department of Health and Ageing, the last case of wild type polio virus infection in Australia had occurred in 1986 and the Western Pacific Region, including Australia, had been declared polio free in 2000.

The WHO officials said polio was a highly infectious disease.

“This shows that we need coordinated efforts by the international community to eradicate polio,” said Dr Khalife Mahmud Bile, chief of WHO Pakistan.

The officials said a meeting of the Australian Health Protection Committee on July 13 had reviewed the case and agreed on national action to trace passengers who had travelled with the infected passenger and to isolate his Australian home contacts.

The department had asked all passengers on Thai Airlines flight TG999 from Bangkok arriving in Melbourne on July 2 to contact it for further information.

The officials said the patient, who had recovered from his initial paralysis, would remain in hospital in isolation until he was diagnosed polio free. His household contacts had been asked to remain in home quarantine till it was established that they were not infected, they said.

They said the risk to healthcare workers was very low, the staff who had contact with the patient would also be screened and all Australian hospital emergency departments had been alerted to look out for any signs or symptoms of polio.

Officials at the Polio Eradication Initiative of the WHO in Islamabad said the Australian government was extremely concerned about the detection of polio case on its soil and had sent the information to Pakistani authorities.

“The Australian government says the case had been imported from Pakistan. The student has been quarantined there,” they said.

WHO’s Sarfaraz Khan Afridi said the poliomyelitis virus was tested for genetic sequencing in the genetic bank which closely resembled with a polio case detected in Khyber Agency in October 2006.

Dr Obaidul Islam of WHO in Islamabad said the polio victim belonged to Gujrat, which had not reported a polio case since 1997.

“We have also collected stool samples from people where he had stayed. We have taken samples from hotels’ staff in Swat and Kalam,” said Dr Afridi.

“The virus is the type which has been found in two polio cases in Nangrahar and Leghman this year,” Dr Obaid said.