Two polio cases reported in Indonesia

The Indonesian Ministry of Health has reported that two 20-month-old toddlers in the West Java town of Sukabumi had polio, which becomes the first cases of polio in more than 10 years, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.

The ministry's polio surveillance team reported that it had received six reports of acute flaccid paralysis in children in the area and followed up the reports by taking specimens and running laboratory tests, said The Jakarta Post.

"The virus found in the area is not indigenous, it is imported," World Health Organization medical officer Bardan Jung Rana, who investigated the case, was quoted as saying.

"It means that the infected children had contact with people who acted as carriers after the virus had entered the country and became widespread," he said.

Immediately after the findings were confirmed, the ministry conducted a door-to-door vaccination campaign for children under the age of five in the area, as well as in four surrounding villages.

"We will proceed with immunization programs for children under the age of five in West Java, Banten and Jakarta," Minister of Health Siti Fadilah Supari said in a press release.

The program is expected to last until June and cover some 5 million children.

Indonesia is the latest former polio-free country to see a re-emergence of the disease. In 2004, the WHO recorded 119 cases of paralytic polio in 15 former polio-free countries.

Indonesia was declared polio-free in 1995 although it continued to carry out vaccination programs for children until 2002.

The Ministry of Health also set up a polio surveillance team to monitor cases of acute flaccid paralysis in children under the age of 15, which are frequently caused by polio.