KABUL (SW) – The World Health Organization has set up the environmental monitoring system to check and counter the spread of polio virus in Afghanistan.
Following the registration of 4 new positive cases of polio in Afghanistan and increasing concerns about its spread, the WHO has announced this move. It has also activated 37 centers to collect infected samples.
Health experts consider these new centers by the World Health Organization to be effective in preventing the spread of polio and emphasized that polio vaccination should be increased to eradicate this disease.
Feda Mohamed Paikan, the former deputy minister of health services at the Ministry of Public Health, told Salam Watandar: “These centers are helpful, but the main problem is whether mothers have the facilities and permission to take their children who have polio symptoms to these centers or not. If we solve the problem permanently, we need to raise the level of awareness in the remote areas and make the vaccine coverage of this disease daily.”
Officials at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) say that as the weather warms, the possibility of the spread of polio has increased.
Kamal Shah Seyed, the communications officer at UNICEF polio program in Afghanistan, said there is a risk that polio will spread to other parts of Afghanistan because the virus exists in the eastern region. “It is our concern that if there is an outbreak and more children are infected with this disease, the polio program will try to prevent the transmission of this disease to other parts of the country.”
Since the beginning of this year, four positive cases of polio have been registered in Batikot, Kot and Nazian districts of Nangarhar, and one of the children with this disease has died.
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