India 2nd in number of polio cases in world: Govt

New Delhi, Apr 27: India comes second after Nigeria in having the largest number of polio cases in the world with 31 new cases of the crippling disease being reported this year, the Government today admitted in Parliament.

Minister of State for Health Panabaka Lakshmi told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply that globally 111 cases of polio were reported till April 17, this year of which 54 were from Nigeria and 31 were from India.

Of this Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of 16 cases of polio, followed by Bihar which reported 11 cases, Andhra Pradesh two and one each from Haryana and Maharashtra.

India had shown a resurgence of polio cases in 2006 when a total of 674 cases were reported with maximum 546 being from Uttar Pradesh alone. Bihar last year had 61 cases of polio, Haryana 19, Uttarakhand 13, Punjab eight and Delhi seven. Besides, Maharashtra had reported five polio cases, Gujarat four, Madhya Pradesh three, Assam two and Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and West Bengal reporting one polio case each.

The resurgence had happened after the country had contained polio to just 66 cases in 2005 and 134 in 2004, she said.

Enumerating the steps being taken to contain wild polio virus in the country, Ms Lakshmi said two full National Immunization Days were implemented in January and February 2007 while one SNID was implemented in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other high risk states/ districts in March and April 2007.

Mop up rounds have been implemented in areas with recent reporting of polio cases like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra on March 18 using mOPV1 while additional immunization rounds were done in 17 endemic districts of Bihar on April 7. To control type three virus circulation mOPV3 were used in four western UP districts during March while another round of SNID would be done in UP and Bihar next month, Ms Lakshmi added.

She said increased programmatic focus has been given to the endemic states like UP and Bihar to ensure highest quality of Supplementary Immunization activity by better involvement of state and district administrative machinery, deploying high level officials to monitor Pulse Polio Immunization activities and increased focus on mechanism to reduce missed children in Western Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, there is more community involvement, involving ASHAs and religious leaders, panchayats and celebrities for community awareness and mobilisation for vaccination.

UNI