Sunday January 20, 10:49 AM

Polio virus detected in Bihar infant

By Imran Khan, Indo-Asian News Service

Patna, Jan 20 (IANS) For the second time in a month, polio virus has been detected in an infant in Bihar, raising serious doubts about the success of the immunisation drive in the state, health department sources said.

A wild strain of the virus was seen in a nine-month-old boy, Ankit Mahto of Muzaffarpur town, 75 km from here. Earlier this month, another child in the town WAS detected with the same virus.

Both the children had been vaccinated against the virus under the Pulse Polio immunisation programme of the state government and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The detection on the eve of another mass vaccination in Bihar has come as a major setback for officials of the health department and WHO who have claimed complete success of the immunisation programme.

Some in Muzaffarpur have aired doubts about the efficacy of the vaccination.

"It is no more safe to give pulse polio drop," said Harihar Singh of Brahampur, a neighbourhood of Muzaffarpur, where the first case was detected in a four-year-old boy on January 1.

Sources in the WHO said though Ankit had been given polio drops, the vaccine might not have had any effect on him, as he was ill at the time. In the first case the boy was not given the drops during the immunization drive in December, the sources added.

A senior health official told IANS that the drive to eradicate polio had proved to be a failure in north Bihar and millions of rupees had been wasted in the process.

According to him, last year 19 children aged between 7 and 49 months had suffered from polio in the state even though they had been given one to 10 doses of the anti-polio drops.

Of these four were reported from Bhagalpur district, two from adjoining Banka district and two each from Patna and Araria districts. These cases were reported between March and September last year, the sources said.

One case each was reported from West Champaran, Lakhisarai, Darbhanga, Munger, Samastipur, Jamui, Khagaria and Sheikhpura districts.

While 18 children were detected with the P1 virus, a different strain of the virus, P3, had been reported in Samastipur.

According to paediatric experts, it was quite possible for the polio virus to attack children with a weak immune system even after vaccination. They said some children might not develop immunity against the P1 virus.

Last year, New Delhi had slammed the Bihar government for setting up only 4,000 booths for immunization during the polio mop-up round on October 14.

It had also directed the state to set up 70,000 booths across the state for the December 2 and January 20 rounds to ensure better coverage.

The state government, however, had requested the federal government, WHO and Unicef to allow it to continue with the door-to-door drive, saying it had proved a huge success in the immunization of children aged 0-2 years.