First case confirmed in the capital which is preparing to host high-level Apec summit

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An outbreak of polio in Papua New Guinea has reached Port Moresby, with the first case in the nation’s capital prompting an emergency vaccination campaign.

A six-year-old boy from the capital’s Five Mile settlement was confirmed as infected after laboratory tests were conducted in Australia.

PNG was declared polio-free in 2000 but in 2018 there has been an outbreak with 10 confirmed cases of the disease, which largely affects young children.

The children affected in PNG range from 12 months old to just under 10. All of them have experienced some paralysis, with some unable to walk, others affected less severely.

The oldest of these children died on Monday night, though Keith Feldon, co-coordinator of the national polio emergency response in PNG, said the boy was also infected with meningitis and tuberculosis, and he wouldn’t attribute the death to polio.

Papua New Guinea suffers first polio outbreak in 18 years Read more

The capital is home to roughly 300,000 people. Previous cases were found in more remote parts of the country: three in Morobe, two in Eastern Highlands, two in Enga and two in Madang.

“This is very concerning – every new case of polio isn’t just a statistic. Each represents a child that will be permanently paralysed,” said Pasco Kase, secretary of the national department of health.

In response the government will conduct an emergency vaccination campaign in Port Moresby beginning on 24 September, with a nationwide campaign to follow on 1 October.

Port Moresby is due to host the Apec summit in November with world leaders including Chinese president Xi Jinping, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and US vice president Mike Pence due to attend.

The lead-up to the summit has been fraught, as the poorest nation in the Apec group has scrambled to prepare buildings, accommodation and infrastructure. There are also concerns about security given the high rates of crime in Port Moresby.

The World Health Organisation representative in Papua New Guinea, Dr Luo Dapeng, said: “The confirmation of polio in an urban area is very worrisome.”

Dapeng said the PNG government and partner organisations were going to “rapidly scale up” the response in Port Moresby and were continuing to search for all possible cases. Efforts were being concentrated in densely populated areas such as settlements, mining communities and areas with significant movement of people.

The first cases were detected in the Morobe province on the north coast of the country, where polio vaccine coverage is low. Water, sanitation and hygiene are serious challenges in the region, adding to the crisis of controlling the highly infectious virus.

The outbreak can be largely attributed to “several years of sub-optimal vaccination coverage”, said Feldon. While you would hope for 80% of the community to be vaccinated, PNG has been seeing rates of 50-60% vaccination coverage across the country, said Feldon.

The estimated budget for the outbreak response plan is US$15.4m and the PNG government has pledged roughly $2.2m toward the effort, with other money coming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the governments of the United States, Canada and Korea.