[An Nahar] Pak health officials Monday called for infants leaving the country to be issued polio...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
vaccinations at airports after virus samples linked to a southern Pak city were discovered in Egypt.
| Whoops! |
Two sewage samples from Cairo were analyzed and found to resemble a recently discovered strain in the Pak city of Sukkur, a joint statement by health officials, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF said.
| And there has been a serious vaccine shortage in the Land of the Pharaohs for about a year, a bad combination |
The statement recommended that "all children under five years leaving the country are vaccinated against the polio virus."
Though Egypt has been polio-free since 2004, authorities there have ordered the immediate vaccination of all children under five years of age in the areas where the samples were found.
| Umm... that vaccine shortage mentioned above: won't that interfere with this plan? Or will the government give up spending money on food imports to pay for a shipment of vaccine? |
Unicef's acting chief of polio unit, Michael Coleman said the incident highlighted the importance of vaccination in Pakistain.
"It reinforces the urgent need of all caregivers across Pakistain to vaccinate children under five years of age against polio through the nearest health facility or through campaign vaccination teams," he said.
Shahnaz Wazir Ali, the prime minister's advisor on polio eradication, termed the case "a stark reminder of the risks associated with active polio virus transmission in the country.
Pakistain is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.