The World Health Organization says it has confirmed two polio infections in PNG. Photo: Supplied / UNICEF/PNG/Chamber
In Papua New Guinea, the World Health Organisation says it is about halfway through a mass polio vaccine drive - with about one million children left to immunise.
Health authorities confirmed last week a four-year-old boy from Lae in Morobe province had paralysis from polio. He was unvaccinated.
Dr Ananda Amarasinghe said the four-year-old Lae boy had paralysis in his left leg and left hand.
"Sometimes we see some children with very severe illness [from polio]. Sometimes they get...breathing difficulties or walking is very much restricted."
In this instance, the boy's paralysis did not appear to be "very severe", he said.
"But whatever the paralysis, it is for his lifetime. That is very sad. We are very sorry about that."
The country declared a polio outbreak in May but this is the first confirmation of paralysis from the virus.
Dr Amarasinghe said they want 95 percent of children under 10 vaccinated against the circulating strain - about 2.3 million in total.
He confirmed on Friday they'd reached 51 percent coverage.
"We hope by September 5, we will reach to the expected coverage of more than 95 percent."
The strain of polio circulating in the country has been identfied as circulatory vaccine derived polio virus two. To combat that, children received two doses of novel oral polio vaccine through the immunisation campaign, Dr Amarasinghe said.
In May, Papua New Guinea's health department said the strain was a "rare form of the virus that can emerge in under-immunised communities but is well understood and can be effectively controlled through vaccination".
The country declarared a polio outbreak after two children were found to have polio - however they were not counted as 'cases' as they did not experience symptoms.
Dr Amarasinghe urged people to get their children vaccinated, particularly as the country's immunisation rates among children had declined to below 50 percent.
"The overall routine vaccine coverage, not only for the polio, measles, hepatitis B, tetanus - all routine immunisation coverage was below 50 pecent.," he said.
"That is the real risk we have seen in Papua New Guinea
"If you [have] 50 percent coverage, that means you [have] 50 percent of children that are unprotected.
The accumulative effects of that posed huge risk, he said.
For example, when 50 percent of the birth cohort was unprotected every year, that eventually rolled into almost half of the population being unprotected overall, Dr Amarasinghe said.
The drivers of that decline were "complex" and included country-wide shortages in healthcare staff as well as shortfalls in the country's health infrastructure. It had also occurred over a period of 15 years.
"Your target population of maturity, more than 50 percent are residing in very remote, inaccessible areas, [sometimes] mountainous and also certain places you have to go only by boats. Certain places...are completely isolated.
"On one side, you are having a very limited human resources. On the other side, you are having quite a big challenge of accessing them."
Funding for services and access to remote locations was another factor, he added.
